Ok, that explains it. But, examples 1 and 2 are understandable but the 3rd one 
I have a question. I was told that AOL is the only ISP that does that initates 
different IP addresses for each pageview. Do most ISP use that feature?



----- Original Message ----
From: Aengus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Support for analog web log analyzer <analog-help@lists.meer.net>
Sent: Monday, August 4, 2008 7:12:44 PM
Subject: Re: [analog-help] "Distinct Host Served"

On 8/4/2008 6:05 PM, Kush wrote:
> 
> Can "distinct host served" be considered as visits, or come close to it?

If I visit your website at 9AM and at 9PM, would you consider that to be 
2 "visits" or one 12-hour long "visit"? There'll only be one "distinct 
host served".

If a company with 1,000 employees has a proxy server, and 30 people from 
that company visit your website, there'll only be one IP address showing 
in your logs. Do you want to count those 100 "visitors" as 1 visit, or 
as 30 visits?

If some of your users are with ISPs that use load balancing proxy 
servers (a "farm" of proxy servers, with requests being shared between 
them), then a single user might show up in your logfiles with 10 
different IP addresses for a single "visit", but 10 "distinct hosts served".

http://analog.cx/docs/webworks.html

The closest that you can get to a reliable count of "visits" is to 
assign each "visitor" a "session_ID", a transient cookie with a limited 
lifetime of 15 or 20 minutes. That will typically require specific 
support on the server side, and will undoubtedly annoy some part of your 
audience. And it requires assumptions about the way your users use your 
site. And if you're going to start making assumptions, you can start by 
admitting that if you change your assumptions, you're going to get 
different answers, even if you start with the same data.

Aengus
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