Blueyonder Hostnames

Salty · Sun 11 Jul, 2004 21.59

Hiya,

I'm trying to track the locations of visitors to my works website,
I've been using the hostnames for users to find out where they are from.

I've worked out that wolv.blueyonder.co.uk is wolverhampton etc..

But does anyone know what perr.blueyonder.co.uk is?

Cheers

SteveL · Sun 11 Jul, 2004 23.37

I think it's Perry Barr in Birmingham.

Martin · Mon 12 Jul, 2004 01.35

I use the hostnames from time to time myself to keep a check on things but they aren't very good when it comes to ISP's like AOL which give no indication where the user is coming from.

Does anyone know a better way of doing it? A particular piece of software for the server perhaps?

Chris · Mon 12 Jul, 2004 01.59

Martin wrote:I use the hostnames from time to time myself to keep a check on things but they aren't very good when it comes to ISP's like AOL which give no indication where the user is coming from.

All AOL users are usually routed behind a transparent proxy, so the proxy's IP address only shows in the logs. ntl users are as well, so long as the proxy servers work.

Only cable ISP's tend to reveal the geographic location of the user, but even then they do not tend to divulge the actual location, more the location of the UBR or hubsite. But as cable is quite localised, it's not too far off from where the customers are.

ADSL ISP's tend to use generic names for their hostnames (e.g. hostxx-xx-xxx-xxx.provider.com or xx-xx-xx-xx.provider.com, as all of them tend to dish out IP addresses from nationwide pools, so it would be useless to have geographical references to locations in them.

Neotrace can find out the geographic locations, although certain places tend to 'throw' it a bit - for example nodes in Reading are marked as "Croydon" on the map, and for some strange reason, all AOL users seem to be on the Isle of Man.