The Infinite File Downloader

Mattias Geniar, Monday, December 29, 2014 - last modified: Monday, January 5, 2015

A random idea. 30 minutes of spare time. And voila, we have a side project. A completely useless one, as well.

I present you: The Infinite File Download. Why? Because!

What is it? A PHP file that just keeps on sending binary data to your browser, as soon as you hit download. It never stops. It'll download as quickly as A) my little server is capable and B) as fast as your line supports it.

Want to test the speed of your downloads, just by downloading random bits and never saving it to your disk? Pipe it to your local trashbin, /dev/null.

$ wget -O /dev/null http://infinite-download.ma.ttias.be/download.php
...
    [        <=>     ] 41.078.320  8,10M/s

I'll also kill this project as soon as the bandwidth exceeds a randomly determined "fair use policy". The source is up on Github. The landing page theme is the Narrow Jumbotron Template from Bootstrap.

Perhaps I could use this to make a statement about "unlimited" bandwidth providers, but I'll keep that rant for another time.

Sponsor: Oh Dear!: Website monitoring. Without the hassle. Multi-location uptime monitoring, mixed content detection and SSL certificate & transparency reporting. Alerting via Slack, HipChat, Pushover, Webhooks or SMS.

Hi! My name is Mattias Geniar. I'm a Support Manager at Nucleus Hosting in Belgium, a general web geek & public speaker. Currently working on DNS Spy & Oh Dear!. Follow me on Twitter as @mattiasgeniar.

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Comments

Deavmi Monday, December 29, 2014 at 16:44 - Reply ↓

For some reason I want this.

Mattias Geniar Monday, December 29, 2014 at 16:44 - Reply ↓

I had the same feeling, like my life just wasn’t … you know … complete, without it.

Deavmi Monday, December 29, 2014 at 16:45 - Reply ↓

Perfect to piss people off at school with a shitload of network conjestion.

Mattias Geniar Monday, December 29, 2014 at 16:45 - Reply ↓

If that’s the plan, I should look to relocate the script, as my bandwidth is actually limited :P

Paul Cobbaut Monday, December 29, 2014 at 17:26 - Reply ↓

I get between 1.3 and 2.0 MB and then it stops. Tested with Iceweasel and wget.

Mattias Geniar Monday, December 29, 2014 at 22:33 - Reply ↓

I’ve read another report on this, but I can’t simulate it. My wget is still running smooth after 100MB downloaded …

Paul Cobbaut Tuesday, December 30, 2014 at 00:04 - Reply ↓

Same machine, same connection… and now it works.

Serge van Ginderachter Monday, December 29, 2014 at 19:54 - Reply ↓

wget gets met 10,3MB/s (Telenet) which is about my top speed I believe.

Christopher Ranschaert Monday, January 5, 2015 at 20:30 - Reply ↓

It has become my secondary speed-tester :-)

A E Tuesday, March 28, 2017 at 11:51 - Reply ↓

Hey there,

Great product, I’m using this to try and get my ISP to assign bandwidth to me so my speeds will go up.
I’ve had minor success with upload and download.

The only thing I have noticed is that it will cut out around 15-16GB. Could you investigate?

Many thanks!

Anton Šijanec Saturday, October 20, 2018 at 00:09 - Reply ↓

Script? Github?