Great Download Site

[Riot]

for those of you that haven't taken advantage of the download sites out there...now is the time that you should download and print these very usefull (and free!) manuals.

http://www.stevespages.com/page7c.htm

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[3 AE]

WOW! What a selection. Thank you for the link Riot. Awesome info available to us.

 

[RockKrawler]

Just an FYI,if people continue to abuse Stevespages he will shut it down again.
Way too many folks just park themselves there and use up a lot of bandwidth,never bother to help him out,or at least send him a thanks.

 

[chrishayes]

Sorry for bringing up such an old thread!
Rock Krawler, you are exactly right! In fact this has now happened. 6 weeks ago I caught Iran in the act of trying to download all the firearms manuals and more importantly, the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines training manuals and killed their process then took the entire site down for several days while I implemented firewall blocks against entire countries, the whole African continent, Much of Europe, and currently have 50% of Russia and 2/3rds of China blocked. The bandwidth charges last month cost an extra $90 dollars which is a LOT considering StevesPages has never met yearly hosting cost through donations. And I am spending an extra $1000 to have a database written to help with security and the account creation that I have been forced to implement.

StevesPages has now become a subscription site at $12 per year. I even got an email from Numrich (gunpartscorp.com) asking about the password request they get when coming to the site. They said they have relied on StevesPages for manuals (which they then sell) and they have never donated to stevespages.com in the 5 years I have run the site since Steve's passing.

Anyway, apologies again for resurrecting such an old thread but this seemed the appropriate place to post this information. Anyone interested should read the front page at the site which give a little more detail on the site. It does not say that the site is open for users yet as I am awaiting the completion of the database before posting there. I am however accepting subscription contacts through direct email from the site.

Chris Hayes, www.stevespages.com

 

[awshoot]

... The bandwidth charges last month cost an extra $90 dollars which is a LOT considering StevesPages has never met yearly hosting cost through donations. ...

I've used Site5 for 10+ years for my business and personal stuff -- for a basic hosting account with unmetered bandwidth/storage it's $9/mo ($7 if you pay for two years up front). Anyway, paying an extra $90/mo for bandwidth when most of what you are hosting isn't high def video seems high. Site5 Web Hosting - Starts at $4.95 A Month

I'm not trying to push Site5 specifically, I'm just familiar with it and a satisfied customer -- there are many options for unmetered bandwidth webhosts, and many of them much cheaper. Some examples (I've never used these so can't comment on reliability):

• $1.99: Fast Web Hosting with Unmetered Bandwidth - Centohost Ltd.
• $2.75: Web Hosting Plans - Shared cPanel Hosting | HostGator
• $3.95: Shared Web Hosting Plans - Fast & Secure Shared Hosting - Bluehost

 

[chrishayes]

I'm with HostGator now and like them. The site was with APlus when Steve passed and while they were good for the first year when I took it over, their support went to crap later and I moved.
The plan I have at Host Gator is sure not $2.75 a month! It's $15.95/month (if I pay 2 years at a time, possibly due to the size of the site) and there is a cap on "free bandwidth" that most sites probably don't ever reach. On StevesPages with 1,000,000 to 4,000,000 hits per month, ALL downloading files, all it takes is a couple abusers during the month to hit the cap. I now have most of the world blocked and traffic is down to about 250,000 to 400,000 per month. Between that and the newly required subscription base, I don't expect to ever hit that usage cap again. Many of the files at StevesPages are as big as some videos, being large pdf files, and again, with the traffic volume downloading (in the past) from all over the world... Thanks for your suggestions but like I said... with the traffic restrictions I now have in place I don't see hitting that top end again. So far the new setup is working very well and everyone is happy with it and understands the new restrictions.

 

[awshoot]

I had a similar issue with Site5 -- way back when I had bought an expensive plan because my personal site had a lot AV content -- that one cost me something like $200/yr. The only way to get to one of their newer plans was to buy a new hosting plan, move everything, and then close the other one. It was annoying that they couldn't just change my billing, but that's how it had to go for whatever reason. Maybe hostgator works similarly.

Anyway, it sounds like you have it sorted but if it becomes an issue in the future, I wonder if wrapping up groups of the files as zip files and then letting one of these file hosting sites like megaupload or rapidshare host them would work -- your site would just contain links and so the actual slug of data would not come out of your service. Just a thought. You would have way less control over who can and cannot download the data, though any minimally competent state or otherwise nefarious actor would just set up a VPN and look like an Iowa address.

 

[chrishayes]

I had one guy tell me my hosting was crap because he couldn't download my files. I explained to him that the hosting was fine and that he couldn't download anything because he didn't have an account. He replied that he wanted the .mil training manuals I have because he wanted to learn boxing and so could I also get him the manuals on troop deployment and coastal defense and radar systems? I told him your interests are exactly why I locked the system down. lol He was probably involved in the original attempt from Iran that I caught and blocked.

I just retired 4 years ago from 30 years in IT, specializing in networks and security. I've been MCSE since NT 3.51 and Sun Solaris admin since Solaris 7 and worked as an engineer for SonicWall firewalls before Dell bought them. Even built from the ground up, my own 50 state ISP back in the dialup days. At one point I had more phone numbers for dialup than AOL and MSN combined... all leased lines. And I thought when I retired, I was getting away from all this IT nonsense! Foolish me... LOL

 

[DuneHopper]

Interesting though there are many of these files on the so called dark web, newsnets etc. I have a pretty extensive collection my self of digital so I wonder why they took the front entrance approach to get files ?>

 

[chrishayes]

Hard to say. With the logging I have I would spot the traffic right away regardless of how they attempted. I've been tracking the deployment of IP pools worldwide for years and can tell you pretty much just by looking at the IP, where it's coming from. Not so much as I used to be able to do when I had the ISP business as number of IPs in use is so much greater than it used to be and pools are vastly segmented. But I still spot the odd ones pretty quick and IP geo-location works well too.

 

[awshoot]

... I just retired 4 years ago from 30 years in IT, specializing in networks and security. I've been MCSE since NT 3.51 and Sun Solaris admin since Solaris 7 and worked as an engineer for SonicWall firewalls before Dell bought them. Even built from the ground up, my own 50 state ISP back in the dialup days. At one point I had more phone numbers for dialup than AOL and MSN combined... all leased lines. And I thought when I retired, I was getting away from all this IT nonsense! Foolish me... LOL

Obviously you don't need random advice from some random dude on a forum! Thanks for being kind about that. ;-)

 

[awshoot]

Interesting though there are many of these files on the so called dark web, newsnets etc. I have a pretty extensive collection my self of digital so I wonder why they took the front entrance approach to get files ?>

You don't even need to go there -- wikipedia has a smaller list, with links. United States Army Field Manuals - Wikipedia

If you want to pay (twice considering your tax dollars paid for them in the first place), Amazon has a ton too:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byl...es+Government+US+Air+Force&sort=relevancerank
https://www.amazon.com/US-Army-Unit...8/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1527555740&sr=1-1

 

[DirectDrive]

Here's the one that some of us want/need.
A great myth-buster for some of the old wive's tales on the internet.

M16/M4 Tech Manual
http://pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/MILITARY/Army M16A2 and M4 manual.pdf

 

[chrishayes]

Obviously you don't need random advice from some random dude on a forum! Thanks for being kind about that. ;-)

Contraire! I don't consider attempts to render help, "random advice" or dis-credit any need for suggestions! All are appreciated! As they say, "It's the thought that counts"!