Red's monthly nerdy internet question!

[Red Mancunian]

Ok peeps, can any of you webmeisters help me with this month's question...?

Frikkin log files!

Right, here's me prob.

When I look at my, um 'logs' (and I don't mean the ones in the toilet) using FTP, I get lots of nice IP addresses that have been visiting. Great.

But when I look at the weekly log page thing on my site, it often gives you the name of the site that's been visiting.

For example, the log page says:

ourladyofmountcarmel.tameside.sch.uk

(a school in Tameside)

but the log files say something like:

195.8.168.252


Right, here's my problem - if i do an IP search on the IP address, I just get something like 'Tameside Council'. How the fekk does the log page thingy know the name of the school, if all I can get is 'Tameside Council'.

I need to know which schools have been looking at certain parts of my website.

Can anyone help?

Sorry to be such a nerd, but I'd rather ask you lot than go on the newsgroups and get bombarded with technical sh*te.

Cheers


Jay

[Tigger]

Are you reading the raw log files or are you using analysis software?

if you aren't get yourself a copy of Webtrends Log Analyser (ver. 6.5c on Kazaa atm) and you'll find it gives you all the info you need without you necessarily understanding how it got it!

[Red Mancunian]

Cheers tiggs

I'm just looking at the raw logfiles with a text editor.

I'll give that a go...

[The Frog Meister]

can I add some confusion??

195.x.x.x are LAN IP..... the chances are that you have been given the IP from their DHCP........

Maybe they have a dynamic IP..... then you will not be able to find them easely

What I have in mind is a dynamic IP with a NAT on the proxy... thus you see their IP as 195.x.x.x

Hope that I made sense!

[Red Mancunian]

LOL Perfectly mate.

I think I'll get my Commodore 64 out of the loft...

And I'll get me coat... :p

[The Frog Meister]

Originally posted by Red Mancunian


LOL Perfectly mate.

I think I'll get my Commodore 64 out of the loft...

And I'll get me coat... :p

Thank f*** you understood... cos I have just re read it and now I'm all confused!!!!!!!!

PS Do you still have that Amstrad CPC 464 I lent ya?

[Red Mancunian]

lol, what do you think I surf the web with, mate?

I love green screens... and tiny fiddly cheap plastic keys...!

[fugjostle]

Only a month late but I so love Red's posts I had to reply

Firstly, I'm hope this clear's up the confusion rather causes more. 195.8.168.252 isn't a LAN IP, its a valid internet address and is routable.

The 195.8.168.252 address belongs to outbound interface of a Cisco PIX firewall owned by Tameside Council. This firewall is providing Network Address Translation (NAT) for the machine formally known as "ourladyofmountcarmel.tameside.sch.uk"

Tameside Council is probably providing Internet access for its local schools. The internal network will use a private addressing scheme (RFC 1918) which will not work on the Internet. The firewall will translate the local network address (eg. 192.168.1.1) into a valid Internet address (eg 195.8.168.252) and it maintains a table of the translations so it can co-ordinate the communication with the inside and outside world.

This is an initial guess at the layout.... if you still want to know then I can find out for definate tonight.

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fug