Puzzle for the week

Brandon Gohsman brandon at squareonedesign.com
Thu Apr 18 11:09:52 CDT 2002


Bwa ha ha ha!!!

Thanks for the info and the side-splitting laughter. I'll pass your
sentiments along to the client (in an edited form).

Yes, I realize what you are saying. I'm not sure that will save me, but I'll
give it a go.

Thanks,

Brandon

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Ott" <bott at grpl.org>
To: "Brandon Gohsman" <brandon at squareonedesign.com>
Cc: "Perl Mongers" <grand-rapids-pm-announce at happyfunball.pm.org>; "Grant"
<Grant at squareonedesign.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: Puzzle for the week


> They're obsessive-compulsive about a wild ass guess?  Because that's
> what WebTrends is producing.  All you have is the IP address or host
> name of whatever made the request.  This could be a proxy server across
> the country from the user.  I believe WebTrends even states something
> like, "...these stats should not be considered accurate, but only give
> an impression."
>
> Sure, you could write something, maybe using Net::Whois and parse
> through the results, but you could use 'rand' to pick the data and end
> up with the same degree of accuracy...
>
> My home IP address (in Wyoming, MI) is registered to AT&T in Middleton,
NJ.
> It's really not possible to get "good" data based on the client address.
>
> If you still want to try, here are some suggestions:
> http://www.private.org.il/IP2geo.html
>
>
> Brandon Gohsman wrote:
>
> > Hey everyone,
> >
> >
> >
> > Here is a brain teaser for anyone who's interested:
> >
> >
> >
> > I have a client who saw a feature in a web log statistics program and
> > now wants it on their site (in an obsessive-compulsive way). One of
> > the many WebTrends packages for web hosts determines what state (if in
> > the US) that a visitor is in. Early on in the development of this
> > client's site, we used a demo of WebTrends to analyze their log file.
> > Among the gaggle of info it returned was the state that the web
> > request originated in.
> >
> >
> >
> > So why don't we just use the WebTrends program? Because the site is
> > hosted by Verio and they won't install it (even if we pay for it).
> > Which means that, in order to use it, we need to download the log file
> > and run it on our machine to get the info. And the log file can get
> > very, very large. This is not a good solution. And although the client
> > adamantly wants this feature, they aren't willing to switch web hosts
> > to get it.
> >
> >
> >
> > So I am charged with the duty of trying to figure out how WebTrends
> > does what it does to get that one tidbit of info. At this point, I can
> > only guess that it takes the domain name/IP address and finds contact
> > info or billing info, pertaining to that address, to get the state. I
> > can't conceive of a way to get that info from any other piece of data
> > in the access.log. I need to figure out exactly how to work backwards
> > from the limited info in the log file to determine the visitor's state.
> >
> >
> >
> > Here is a typical line from the access log:
> >
> >
> >
> > bgp930234bgs.brmngh01.mi.comcast.net - - [18/Apr/2002:01:01:32 -0400]
> > "GET /CutOutArt6.swf HTTP/1.1" 200 5779 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
> > MSIE 5.01; Windows 98)"
> >
> >
> >
> > I know that it is possible to do reverse DNS lookups on a domain name
> > to get the IP address and visa versa.  I don't know how or if it will
> > get me any closer to solving my problem.
> >
> >
> >
> > Have any of you ever had to do this or have a clue about where I would
> > begin?
> >
> >
> >
> > Danke,
> >
> >
> >
> > Brandon Gohsman
> >
> > Humble Librarian
> >
>
>
>
>




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