Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there?

[Alex Zbyslaw]

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