🤖 Overview

Mb2345Browser is a web crawler operated by Shanghai 2345 Network Technology Co., Ltd., a Chinese internet firm best known for the 2345.com navigation portal and its associated search engine. First documented in public web server logs around 2012, this bot systematically indexes publicly accessible web content to populate the 2345 search index and support the company’s online directory and traffic analytics services. Unlike some Chinese crawlers, it is explicitly advertised as a legitimate agent for web discovery, with official guidelines published on the 2345 webmaster portal.

🌐 Technical Behavior

The crawler employs a breadth-first traversal strategy, sending requests from IP ranges registered to 2345 Network Technology under ASN assigned by APNIC, typically originating from mainland China. Observations indicate a typical request interval of 5 to 30 seconds per domain, though bursts of up to 50 requests per minute have been recorded during refresh cycles. It communicates over HTTP/1.1 and HTTPS, favouring port 80 and 443, and sends standard Accept and User-Agent headers without custom extensions. The bot does not execute JavaScript or render pages, relying solely on raw HTML parsing. A minority of requests are preceded by a HEAD method to check for content changes, followed by a GET if the resource is new or modified. Reverse DNS lookups on its IPs typically resolve to hostnames under the .2345.com domain, a reliable verification method.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

According to the official 2345 webmaster documentation, Mb2345Browser is designed to honour the Robots Exclusion Protocol, including Disallow directives and Crawl-Delay settings. Community reports from forum discussions (e.g., WebmasterWorld, Chinese hosting forums) suggest that the bot generally complies with these rules, although isolated instances of ignoring Crawl-Delay have been noted when no explicit delay is set. The company has published a dedicated page outlining its crawler’s behaviour, reinforcing its commitment to standard web crawling etiquette.

🔍 Detection Indicators

The primary User-Agent string is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Mb2345Browser/1.0) with version numbers like 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0. Alternative strings include Mb2345Bot and 2345Spider. Behavioral fingerprints include a high frequency of HEAD requests preceding GET, a lack of JavaScript evaluation, and a consistent request pattern that does not randomise intervals. No distinctive custom headers are sent beyond standard Accept-Language: zh-CN,en;q=0.9 and Connection: keep-alive. Logs can be cross-referenced with the IP range prefix allocated to Shanghai 2345 Network Technology.

📊 Data Usage

Collected data fuels the 2345 search engine index, the company’s navigation directory at 2345.com, and aggregated analytics for internal product improvement. There is no public evidence that the data is used directly for training large language models, though the company has invested in AI-driven search ranking. Portions of the content may be cached and served in snippet form on search result pages.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

Rate limiting is applied because Mb2345Browser can generate bursts of traffic that exceed typical human browsing patterns, potentially degrading server performance. A threshold of 100 requests per minute per IP, or a specific Crawl-Delay: 10 in robots.txt, is commonly recommended by hosting providers to prevent resource exhaustion while still allowing the crawler to complete its indexing tasks in a predictable manner.

ⓘ Data Notice: The information presented above has been compiled from publicly available internet sources. Boteraser aggregates this data solely for informational purposes and does not independently classify, evaluate, or endorse any findings about the bots listed. The accuracy and completeness of this information is the sole responsibility of the original publishers. Boteraser and its operators accept no liability for any decisions made based on this data.