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We are hosting one of our binary packages on Bintray in a private repository and give user a signed URL when downloading from our website.

If we open Bintray download statistics (live log) we see really strange records for one and the same file (it is our normal file):

time            IP              file            size    user

1500912829000   114.4.79.235    /bla-bla.exe    72016   anonymous
1500912828000   114.4.79.235    /bla-bla.exe    56756   anonymous
1500912828000   114.4.79.235    /bla-bla.exe    24049   anonymous
...

A lot of downloads with the same IP and different file size.

It seems that Bintray counts partial downloads as a unique download attempt. When we open statistics graphs we see really big numbers of downloads, but now we assume that these numbers are fake.

Does anybody know how Bintray counts partial downloads?

jreznot
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1 Answers1

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Bintray displays partial download transactions in downloads statistics, since there is no way of reliably telling if multiple partial downloads from a single origin amount to a full download/s.

The total bytes consumed by partial downloads against your account in calculated correctly, however.

One possible explanation to what you are seeing is customers using a download-manager browser extension.

Disclaimer, I work for JFrog, the company behind Bintray.

galusben
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    Can we recognize latest chunk download in these log entries? That could help us to count downloads more precisely. – jreznot Jul 26 '17 at 13:10
  • When generating the signed url you can supply callback_id (in the api) or 'Applicative request identifier' (in the UI), some unique identifier for the link. This will show in the log entry the unique identifier. It will let you group the attempts by generated url. It might not give the expected results, since it will also group multiple downloads from the same signed url. It might be a good solution if you supply a short expiration time. – galusben Jul 26 '17 at 14:12
  • Good idea. There is no functionality that matches your request exactly. However, we will consider adding it. Note that there might still be false reports if the last chunk is downloaded out of order and the file in total is not. You are welcome to contact us directly for more information. – galusben Jul 26 '17 at 17:18
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    And one more problem with current statistic - aggregated stats by countries are affected by these partial downloads, so these numbers are not reliable. – jreznot Jul 27 '17 at 10:29