Question of a spider from stats

[doneritehosting]

Has anyone using the wordpress reseller templates noticed the spider [hosted.by.liquidnetlimited.com] ip 198.23.53.171 frequently visiting their site and would anyone know the purpose of this spider?

[clivejo]

I do indeed!

198.23.53.171 - - [Sat Mar 02 10:46:40 2013] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 24380 "-" "-"

[doneritehosting]

Traces back to the main corporate site clivejo.. could you find out some info on that.. strange that liquidnet would be spidering our reseller sites.

[clivejo]

What's also strange is that the web-server is replying with something different than we are seeing.

The first is the log when the spider visits, the second in when I visit

198.23.53.171 - - [Sun Mar 03 00:09:37 2013] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 24380 "-" "-"

<my ip> - - [Sun Mar 03 00:17:58 2013] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 6234 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:19.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/19.0"

See the size difference? The size is 6234 when I visit, but 24380 when they do So they are getting a different page or data than what I'm seeing! A bit concerning!

[doneritehosting]

Very strange indeed.. Have you asked anyone at rsp about this yet clivejo?

[clivejo]

No, I'm guessing they are sick of me constantly asking silly questions about VPS's and folder sizes!

Have you?

[doneritehosting]

Nope, I have not lol, for the same reasons lmao!!! But I am fixing to.. I'm curious.

[clivejo]

I added the IP to the IP Blocking section of the Hepsia CP, which uses the .htaccess to deny the IP in question. However, I’m still seeing it in my logs

Id like to know what this IP is doing, its obviously polling on a regular bases for something!

[doneritehosting]

I dont know clive, I would too. Miroslav says its the API. I dont see anything where its reading past the home directory of my site in stats..

[clivejo]

The IP is different one to the API, same subnet but different machine. It stopped for a few hours after my block, but then started up again. Its only getting 403 errors now, but I want to know why its doing it!

[doneritehosting]

Hey clivejo,
Have you been able to pry anymore information from support about this?

[clivejo]

No, no luck. They say its the API, but everything is working fine with it blocked and being fed 403 errors! Its very strange! I wonder is it some kind of information gathering bot gathering stats on what themes, plugins etc resellers are using? Doesn’t explain why its visiting 1-4 times per hour, every hour!

[doneritehosting]

no it dont. once every 24 hours would do

[clivejo]

Support have indicated that it is a script and it is looking for potential problems with the RSP Plugins. Therefore, only visits resellers who are using the API. I wonder if it sees 403 Forbidden errors as a problem

[doneritehosting]

It might not be good for future bug fixes in the plugin lol..