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WebAPI (403) Forbidden for pictures

On a previously working account, we just started getting 403 errors when trying to retrieve photos. Here's a sample URL:

//cdnparap40.paragonrels.com/ParagonImages/Property/P4/SMLSA/507144/0/0/0/67e9d0191a55a7ea86067e2e36f8260d/1/3bf153765db6a56160e936e3830df0e5/507144.JPG

We normally access listings at URL: https://smlsa.paragonrels.com/OData/S... using account: smlsaCryeLeike but pictures don't normally require credentials that I recall.

pstallings's avatar
pstallings
asked 2022-08-16 12:57:14 -0500
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That image URL worked fine for me so it is probably related to your IP address.

bwolven's avatar bwolven (2022-08-16 15:54:21 -0500) edit
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When pulling images by URL from the CDN. There is a Rate limit of: 5000 requests within 5 minutes, per IP Address, across all "cdnpara*.paragonrels.com" image URLs. When the limit is exceeded, the IP address is then blocked for several hours and a 403 error is returned while it is blocked. Limits were implemented to address abuse and to ensure stability of systems for our customers. To avoid this, you can add delays between image requests and/or you can also use multiple IP addresses, especially if you access multiple MLSs.

bwolven's avatar
bwolven
answered 2022-08-16 15:53:48 -0500
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1) Can you tell if we did in fact trip the limit or is that the only possible cause of this error? Our IP may show to you as 208.62.148.2 2) Is this limit new? 3) "Several hours" is a pretty harsh penalty when you're trying to list houses

pstallings's avatar pstallings (2022-08-16 16:00:28 -0500) edit
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The limit has been enabled since at least January 2022 if not before that.
I'm told the delay may be 4 hours until it resets the IP block.
If the URL works from another box with a different external IP address, that is the issue.
Recently there was a change to disable access using HEAD requests for CDN images, as questions noted in red on this site state.

bwolven's avatar bwolven (2022-08-16 16:23:35 -0500) edit
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Do your RETS feeds also use the "cdnpara*.paragonrels.com" photo URLs? We have several Paragon Rets feeds as well as this one web API one. We don't store those URLs once we pull down the photos. It's going to very hard for us to separate out where these requests come from.

pstallings's avatar pstallings (2022-08-17 09:58:55 -0500) edit
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