On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 04:27:09AM -0500, Roy White wrote:
> I have been asked to get a solution for web access monitoring, not
> blocking just monitoring. I was going to use ipchains and log all packets to
> port 80 to the outside world, but the question I have is how do I find out
> (with reasonable accuracy) how long a person spends on any one site if I am
> only monitoring port 80 access
You don't, and the data that people put out purporting to tell this is IMHO
bullshit. How it's done (from a site's point of view, not from your kind of
monitoring) AFAIK is to log the time at which a page is viewed, store it in
a cookie, then when a viewer clicks to another page in the site, they deduce
that the interval has been spent looking at the other page, which is of
course not necessarily correct. Perhaps it's close enough to correct for an
advertiser - not my field.
From your point of view, you can record the times pages were requested, but
then you've got all the page elements too. Then you record the the next time
a page is requested from that IP address - can you assume that all the
intervening time was spent viewing the first page - not to satisfy the
employment appeals tribunal, I wouldn't imagine :-)
Regards,
Niall
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
