Posted by Peter on 12/03/05 19:22

Hi,

I have a couple of download links on my site but they are in fact links to a
php script.
I dynamically construct a url to the file based on script input and/or a
randomizer to be able to spread the download over multiple locations etc.

At the end of the script I do this :

header("Location: $newurl"); // re-direct

The $newurl is then for instance http://www.location1/file1.zip

I have logged many thousands of (suposedly) successful downloads but once in
a while I get an email from somebody who claims download doesn't work from
all links. When I then try I have no problem at all.
This has not happened once, of course not everybody will do the effort to
write an email. Say once every 50.000 (logged) downloads (probably less)

Q.
1. Do you think this could be due to bandwidth issues sometimes ? Although
these people usually claim the website itself works ok and fast enough ?
2. Or do you think that the header() call is not always OK ? I have no
issues with IE and FireFox and yet usually these claims come from people
using either IE or Firefox as well.
3. Or something else altogether ?

[Back to original message]