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

[Xiao-Yong Jin]

Chris Whitehouse <chris at childeric.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> 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?  I don't know enough about the internals of
>> either portsnap or cvsup to know if there is some kind of unique id
>> associated with hosts.  If not, then you'd wildly over count for
>> many home-based, variable IP systems.  
>
> Maybe not so many, my non-static ip hasn't changed since I signed up 3
> years ago despite turning off the modem for the odd day or
> two. Another network I look after also hasn't changed in a year.
>
But one can't rely on that.  You'll definitely see more than one ip
associated with my laptop, if I move it around.

A more reliable way that I can think of is generating a unique ID
number when a system finishes installation or upon the first boot.
However, it may involve some additional privacy problem.  What do you
think?

-- 
Xiao-Yong