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

[Colin Percival]

Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
> Counting portsnap and cvsup accesses is non-intrusive - i.e. nothing
> sent from local host - will count systems from any version of FreeBSD,
> but will never count everything because sites with multiple hosts may
> easily have local propagation mechanisms.  But you will get an order of
> magnitude.  However, how do you deal with systems with variable IPs?

For the portsnap usage statistics, I'm measuring how many days of updates
were downloaded per day.  In the long run this will be equal to the number
of systems using portsnap, whether they update daily or monthly, and whether
they have a fixed IP address or a different IP address every time.

The only problem I've seen with this method is that it is rather sensitive
to holidays: There is a dip in measured portsnap usage in late December,
folllowed by a sharp spike in early January before the measured usage returns
to normal, since many systems were not being updated over the Christmas
holiday, and then suddenly needed to "catch up" in early January (and since
they were downloading several weeks of updates, they each looked like several
machines).

Colin Percival