Re: From Maximiliano Hansen (Webmaster Citibank Argentina)
Roy T. Fielding (fielding@kiwi.ics.uci.edu)
Thu, 22 Oct 1998 22:29:05 -0700
>I use wwwstat and I would like to know what is a "request" exactly.
From the manual:
NOTES
Hits vs Requests vs Visitors
wwwstat counts HTTP requests received by the server. When a
request is successful, it is often referred to as a "hit".
Retrieving a single image is one GET request. Retrieving an
HTML page is also one GET request, but that does not include
the separate requests made for in-line images or related
objects. Checking to see if a cached image is still valid
(a HEAD or conditional GET) is also one request.
In all sections except the archive section, wwwstat shows
the statistics for all requests (successful or not). In the
archive section, it normally shows all non-successful
requests under a special category for the status code and
only successful requests (hits) under the URL or archive
tree associated with the request. However, this grouping of
non-successful requests is disabled when wwwstat is used
with the search options -n, -c, and -C, since those options
are normally used for finding error conditions.
wwwstat does not count "visitors" -- individual people or
programs making the requests. HTTP does not, by default,
provide any information that can be accurately correlated to
an individual person, though it is possible (in an
unreliable manner) to use HTTP extensions and request
profiles as a means of tracking individual client programs.
Such tracking requires extensive resources (memory and
diskspace) and is often considered a violation of privacy.
With the exception of the ident section, wwwstat does not
reveal information about the individual people making
requests. Unless the output is limited to a specific URL or
a specific hostname, wwwstat's output does not connect the
requester to the URL being requested.