[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by glowinggal

This must be the issue on our LDM too - many users will complain somtimes a link is broken and once it's gone through this "30 second timeout" seems that the link is actually broken.

Just to be clear -

If an entry in LDM

a) points to a downloadable file (i.e. has a filetype that appears in the VBulletin Attachments table), and
b) is set up as a full url (i.e. http::/site/dir/file.typ) - NB it doesn't matter if site is actually your own site or somebody else's

then you are likely to have problems with running out of CPU time if the file is bigger than a few MBytes. This is because the work of retrieving the file and then retransmitting it to the user is expensive. There isn't much one can do about that.

LDM is much more efficient if the file is actually stored on your own server and the entry is set up using the local file name rather than as a full url.

Note also that these problems do not occur if the entry points to a filetype that is not in the VBulletin attachment table, because in this situation, LDM itself is not actually managing the transfer - the user's browser and the original site are doing all the work. However, this gain in efficiency is achieved at a loss of secrecy about the location of the file.