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Dynamic IP addresses within 'session'

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Subject:  Dynamic IP addresses within 'session'
Author:   thomaid:   view profile | all posts by this author | add to favourites
Date:   12:43:40 3 June 2003
 
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 nothing intrinsic about server logs which makes them vulnerable to this kind of problem - the problem is related to how you identify your visitors.

If you use the visitor's IP address (and perhaps their User Agent) to identify them, then this problem (plus all the other proxy goings on on the Internet) will give you very inaccurate visitor numbers and session paths. This is as true for a tagging approach as it is a server log approach.

The thing to do is issue a persistent (or at least session) cookie to the browser and log this, either by getting it written into the server log, or making sure your tag code picks it up and includes it in the tag request. Then you can use the cookie as the session identifier and these problems go away.

On balance, I think it's perhaps slightly neater to go with the tag approach, mainly because it's a one-step operation and doesn't (usually) require any server configuration. And you get the added benefit of cache-busting too, so your PI numbers (though not necessarily your visits) will go up (probably).

Cheers,

Ian Thomas
WebAbacus
www.webacus.com
 
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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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