Re: Downloading very large files

Thank you for the input. For now we are just using PHP to create symbolic links to the video files and the links are removed when they are done viewing the video. We are open to other suggest still, but for now, this fills our needs and bypasses putting so much stress on PHP as to put hundreds of mb of files through it. Why secure? A combination of all those reason. Thanks, Jonathan On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Rory Browne wrote:

I've seen this problem many times before, but I'm not sure what solution was found. Possible solutions: Encrypt the file, make it publicly available, and then give the right people the encryption key. Put it behind a .htaccess file allowing only the IP of the correct person - remove the .htaccess entry after a certain lengh of time. Why are the videos secure? Copyright? Privacy? Bandwidth? On 2/13/06, Jonathan Duncan <jonathan@nacnud.com> wrote:

I have an application that delivers files to the client browser. These files a very large video files. 250mb+ each. I have two options: 1) I could have PHP deliver the file with "fread", or 2) I could have PHP present a link to the file. However, for security purposes, I would rather not have the actual files available. I suppose I could have PHP create temporary symbolic links on the file system that link to the files in question and then remove the links, thus requiring the users to go through an authentication process to retrieve files that are assigned to them. Anyway, downloading such large files causes PHP to balk with size limitation errors. I could increase the size limit and memory limit settings in "php.ini", but for file sizes that large, is it recommended? Are there "best practice" limits on these settings: max_input_time, memory_limit, max_execution_time, etc.? Thanks, Jonathan