What are some potential drawbacks or limitations of using IP addresses for flood control in PHP applications?

One potential drawback of using IP addresses for flood control in PHP applications is that it can be easily bypassed by users who have dynamic IP addresses or by using proxy servers. To address this limitation, it is recommended to combine IP address filtering with other techniques such as session-based rate limiting or captcha verification.

// Example code snippet combining IP address filtering with session-based rate limiting

session_start();

$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$limit = 10; // Set the limit of requests per session

if(isset($_SESSION['requests'])) {
    $_SESSION['requests']++;
} else {
    $_SESSION['requests'] = 1;
}

if($_SESSION['requests'] > $limit) {
    // Implement flood control action here, such as blocking the user or showing a captcha
    die("Flood control triggered");
}