Unique Visitors = 1/10th of Unique IPs?

Max Fomitchev submitted a little blog entry where he proposes that the ratio of unique IPs to actual unique users is 10:1. This flies in the face of the numbers you usually see attached to these sorts of things. I'm not sure about the logic he uses to come up with these numbers either.

Re:Already considered.

[Homology]

How about adding MAC addresses

Your MAC address survives at most until the next router.

Crazy article

[TheLastUser]

You can't trust web stats, that much I agree with. The rest is a bunch of hand waving.

DSL customers do not get a new IP every time they turn on their computer. Maybe some do, but my IP changes maybe once every few months, max.

He fails to mention the effect of NAT'ing and mega proxies, both of which are in heavy use and have the OPPOSITE effect. All of AOL emerges through a small number of IP addresses, clearly more eyeballs than IPs.

I agree that IP != eyeball, but that's it, there could be more eyeballs than ips or less, who knows, and it probably varies from site to site, based on demographic. There is no way to know for sure. Cookies will only tell you the number of computers.

Re:nothing much here

[level_headed_midwest]

From what I hear, most cable users are on DHCP. In fact, my cable provider doesn't even allow the option of a static IP whereas the DSL provider will (for an extra fee, of course.)

Re:Already considered.

[level_headed_midwest]

That's called Internet Protocol Version 6, where some of the address is your MAC address.

Re:AOL uses HTTP caching

[drinkypoo]

I wonder if the other major ISPs do the same.

No, most of the major ISPs just have an agreement with someone like Level3.net that handles dialin for them, and they only do caching for customers who pay for "high speed dialup" which is to say browsing through caching proxies that degrade image quality in order to reduce bandwidth consumption due to page loads.

bad maths here

[Ankh]

There are so many factors here that focusing on one probably isn't sensible.

Some examples:

1. Even DSL users can often keep an IP address for several weeks, depending on the ISP.
2. On the other hand, any sensibly configured home network (OK, that's almost none of them perhaps) has a hardware firewall, or has multiple users with "connection sharing", so multiple users per IP.
3. Most offices use a firewall with NAT, so all of $BIG_COMPANY appears to be one IP address.
4. Some ISPs run an HTTP proxy -- AOL is one example -- so that static pages will only be fetched once per Expiry period (or once per day) even if everyone on AOL looks at them.
5. In any case, numbers of users is not the same thing as number of IP addresses; sites are reporting based on cookies or on login codes.
6. small numbers like 10 sometimes take on different values. Er, OK, no they don't but I'm bored.

I don't really know why it matters in any case. For advertising, clickthrough rate is more important than number of users, and they are not very closely related. Sadly, the poorer your site's navigation the higher the clickthrough rate (and the fewer pages on your site people will see each visit, as the ads take them away sooner).

Re:10 was arbitrary

[MikeFM]

I've been surprised on the cookie issue. I thought nobody would block cookies but then I've had to resolve a number of issues with users who do block cookies. Evidently a few anti-spyware type programs commonly used block cookies by default. A real pain in the ass to figure out to tell the truth. This whole anti-cookie thing drives me nuts since they really are harmless for the most part.

Proxy servers add some issues too. I'm pro-proxy as it does reduce load on servers, speed up the user's experience, etc. It does make tracking harder though and causes some hiccups with dynamic pages sometimes.

Re:I thought it was the opposite.

[XorNand]

True, but some broadband providers intentionally hand the client a different IP when their lease expires in order to:

a. Prevent subscribers from running servers without paying for a static IP. While dynamic DNS services can be a workaround much of the time, it doesn't work very well with SMTP or other cases where DNS caching can cause issues.

(or, if you ask the provider)

b. To decrease the likihood of crackers breaking in your computer.

Re:I thought it was the opposite.

[spyrochaete]

If you don't want to change settings every time your coworker's IP changes check out No-IP [no-ip.com]'s dynamic DNS service. I've been hosting many live services from my home network for years including POP3\SMTP email and it's been impeccably stable, and totally free!

Re:On the contrary...

[ranson]

AOL user's actual IPs do not change mid-session, but the web proxy server that is making requests on behalf of the user changes all the time; my server logs even show certain objects on a single page for the same user are requested by different cache-*.aol.com servers.

Lots of info about that is here.. including the proxy IP list, etc... http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html [aol.com] they say specfically "When a member requests multiple documents for multiple URLs, each request may come from a different proxy server. Since one proxy server can have multiple members going to one site, webmasters should not make assumptions about the relationship between members and proxy servers when designing their web site."

Re:I thought it was the opposite.

[TheRaven64]

This sig has been in use for a while. I've seen it before, but it's obviously not a real comment; the link text isn't coloured and there bullet is not the right character. When I saw it first (a year ago?), it seemed an obvious joke, and I laughed a little. Perhaps you need to lighten up a bit?

Re:10 was arbitrary

[Bogtha]

and honestly if you site has SSL support why not redirect your users to that at all times (i do if they are loged in - even for message boards)

It totally eliminates public caching (e.g. ISP caches). A waste of bandwidth, a waste of CPU, and slower speeds (it can be a lot faster for users to get stuff from an intermediate cache than from the origin server).

Also, this isn't an option for anybody using name-based virtual hosting, which is incredibly common. There have been specifications published for getting around this, but browser support isn't there yet.

Re:10 was arbitrary

[ADRA]

How many user are sitting behind my company's single routable IP address? Hit: Its over 1000.

This sways the number in the opposite direction. The number the story's based on is completely baked. You could attempt to statisticly estimate the number of unique users/ip on your site with some effort, but you can't get a real concensus between one sight and the next. The reason is demographics. If you take a mobile enabled sight, you're almost always guaranteed to get at least 2 IP's per user(one mobile usability, one desktop ease), but if you take a corp-LAN, you're almost guaranteed to have 1-1 user/IP.

As for sites worrying about anonymity-type scatter IP, I think that most anonymity-type solutions are quite easy to detect if a site maintainer really tries to. Remember, the referrer record is your friend here. If the user decides to piss around and blank it out, just loop them back to the main site page or something or tell them to login. So, if user X is behind a proxy that drops referrer headers, tell them to login or 'goto hell'. If someone's using an open relay, drop them from your site all together. A hit doesn't count as a user if you don't let them in =)

Re:10 was arbitrary

[Amouth]

"this isn't an option for anybody using name-based virtual hosting, which is incredibly common"

this isn't true.. i have never had any issue with this - you just need to have it set up right which is quite easy.. what are you using that has this problem?