CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cookieswebunique
siddhusingh
siddhusingh

Reputation: 1868

Why Cookie is the only way to know the number of users

I was reading howstuffworks and this is what is written there : http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cookie3.htm " It turns out that because of proxy servers, caching, concentrators and so on, the only way for a site to accurately count visitors is to set a cookie with a unique ID for each visitor."

Couldn't derive from it why only cookie is the way ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 40

Answers (1)

Dave Newton
Dave Newton

Reputation: 160261

Thirty users might come from the same IP address (think an ISP block or inside a corporate network).

Thirty different users might retrieve content from various caches rather than making unique requests that make it all the way to the app server (local cache, ISP cache ,etc.)

Without tracking individual sessions, traffic may be mis-estimated or mis-interpreted.

Upvotes: 2

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