From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 2 17:47:39 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C29816A4E5 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 17:47:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nikolas.britton@gmail.com) Received: from wr-out-0506.google.com (wr-out-0506.google.com [64.233.184.228]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 00F8F43D53 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 17:47:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nikolas.britton@gmail.com) Received: by wr-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id 70so45375wra for ; Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:47:38 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=JlwCAHYsxQGHnaazHsdlFSfTD+6oQqP8qyvvbmKwdCQNlJEXRc5kkblqidebMWT6YK1CThwY4m6cLZJxU+FBzM2cFkYxVdPvmBVayvQW1mlgzTnK31/VRRiSkDuSG/OIFdCEZgCBCP4kATplcyrIoDmviumDII7JbyNxjr1KxYw= Received: by 10.78.127.6 with SMTP id z6mr454606huc; Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:47:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.78.143.11 with HTTP; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 10:47:37 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 12:47:37 -0500 From: "Nikolas Britton" To: "Alex Zbyslaw" In-Reply-To: <44D09F46.6020300@dial.pipex.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <20060728164526.E27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060801120058.O27679@ganymede.hub.org> <17615.30414.314802.792740@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060801230301.Q27679@ganymede.hub.org> <44D09F46.6020300@dial.pipex.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:47:39 -0000 On 8/2/06, Alex Zbyslaw wrote: > Atom Powers wrote: > > > > > It's still going to take you at least a release to get it into the > > base install. But if you can find a way to use the portsnap data and > > get useful information out of the cvsup data you can probably get > > numbers now with an error margin as low as 8% to 15%. > > Hey, I said that a week ago! Guess I agree with you :-) > > Not quite convinced by the error margin, but as long as you count too > low then I see no problem. If, as Nikolas pointed out, a URL-based > reporting scheme can be bombarded with fakes, as a vendor I would not > want to listen to any numbers it produced. > > But the question then goes back to: can you make any kind of count out > of cvsup servers? Someone already said they thought you couldn't. > > At the end of the day, I think that unique IP address is as close as > it's possible to get to host count. It will undercount NATed hosts and > networks with single cvsup/portsnap distribution points, and will > overcount variable IP addresses. The latter, I think matters the least > as long as you do your stats over a short enough period (e.g. 1 month). > That wouldn't overcount much and deliberate faking would be hard and > limited (how many IP addresses can one faker get access to?). > > Then, as long as the methodology is clearly explained along with any > stats, you'd have the ammunition to persuade vendors (we hope). > > --Alex > The problem with cvsup (I use cvsup.) is the error margin. The closer we get to release dates the more I use cvsup, It's a side effect of running -STABLE. anyways... back to the fakers... Lets think about the usage patterns of a "typical" faker vs NAT: Faker: * All from one IP address. * Sequential requests. * Scripted, so each request should be timed perfectly with the one before and the one after it. * Thousands of requests. NATed Boxes: * All from one IP address. * Parallel requests. * Not scripted, requests should be more random. * Hundreds of requests? Also I seem to remember a way to detect NATed boxes: http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=detecting+NAT&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/