CODEWITHSUNDEEP
apacheloggingip-addressnat
Mark Messa
Mark Messa

Reputation: 470

Apache: IP addresses vs users

Suppose you wanna analyze your access log files in order to check users activities. One common way is to assume that a same IP address corresponds to a same user.

However, several internet providers use CGNAT. Which, briefly, allows multiple end users to use a common public IP address. In that case, users behind a CGNAT and sharing the same public address might be confused with each other. Therefore, causing problems to calculate view counts and to ban disruptive traffic.

Question
Any alternative to mitigate that?
(Preferably using only Apache)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 51

Answers (1)

Capsule
Capsule

Reputation: 6159

You could consider unique users are unique combinations of IP+user-agent. It would be a bit better but still wouldn't be able to differentiate users on the same IP and using the same browser, on the same platform.

Other than that, you'd need to use a server side scripting technology and track sessions. That would require cookies tho, which is not too much of a biggie. You can't track static assets using that method tho.

Upvotes: 2

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