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Dynamic IP addresses within 'session'

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Subject:  Dynamic IP addresses within 'session'
Author:   swallace:   view profile | all posts by this author | add to favourites
Date:   12:27:35 2 June 2003
 
I thought other subscribers may be interested in a 'feature' of web-logs which doesn't seem to be common knowledge. About a year ago I discovered that a number of ISPs (AOL in particular) are dynamically assigning IP address within session, meaning that one visit through an 'offending' ISP will generate file requests in the web-log under multiple IP addresses. This obviously has the effect of 'cutting' the visit into multiple shorter visits when the web-logs are parsed for analysis. Depending on the type of site (e.g. consumer) and the type of media being used to promote the site (e.g. banners on AOL) this can have a very negative impact on the quality of data obtained for site analysis.

Since learning of this I have been extremely wary of using any web-log based data, and will only trust the 2nd or 3rd generation Javascript tag generated data. Slightly more worrying is the fact that a couple of (web-log based analysis) vendors I have spoken to since were unaware of this issue.

Does anybody else have similar experience?
 
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  • Dynamic IP addresses within 'session', swallace, 2 Jun 12:27
    I thought other subscribers may be interested in a 'feature' of web-logs which doesn't seem to be common knowledge. About a year ago I discovered that a number of ISPs (AOL in par ...
    • Dynamic IP addresses within 'session', thomaid, 3 Jun 12:43
      Well, this is certainly something we're aware of. It's a particular problem with AOL, which round-robins people through about 30 proxies during their session. However, there's noth ...
      • Dynamic IP addresses within 'session', David_Brown, 3 Jun 14:32
        Ian is correct in so far as the degree of inaccuracy caused by dynamic IP addresses depends on whether the IP is being used for unique user identification. However, the vast majori ...
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