Re: Number of persons using the Web

Sean Pfister (seanp_at_cnet.com)
Fri, 16 Aug 1996 09:26:16 -0700 (PDT)

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6rom: droberts_at_wizardsoft.com (David S. Roberts)

>Surely someone, somewhere, has done the research and the math to create a
>site where every few seconds or minutes a number estimating the current
>total of Web users clicks over to a higher number....
>Anybody know if such a site exists?

I think this is impossible, given the current state of technology. The only
way I can imagine it would be by aggregating ALL the data that flows
through the 'net backbone and then somehow identifying all unique users in
real time, to increment the counter. (Some of the scripts that parse our
log files--not count, not analyze, just parse--take a couple hours to run
on a Sparc 5. And that's for one site.)

The inevitable proxie server issue also rears its ugly head--can't identify
individual users. And a Web connection is not a steady state connection
like a telephone is. Once the client has requested an interaction with a
server and the page is served, there is no realtime evidence that the user
is "on" the Internet until the next mouse click.

sean pfister
director, research and analysis
CNET: The Computer Network
seanp_at_cnet.com
415-395-7805 x 1529
Fax: 415.395.9205

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