Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 03:21:14 -0500 From: "Nikolas Britton" <nikolas.britton@gmail.com> To: "User Freebsd" <freebsd@hub.org> Cc: Xiao-Yong Jin <xj2106@columbia.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there? Message-ID: <ef10de9a0608010121j154c7ael7ece0997a479572e@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20060731220830.B27679@ganymede.hub.org> References: <20060728164526.E27679@ganymede.hub.org> <87slklj9hu.fsf@photon.homelinux.org> <20060729021007.F27679@ganymede.hub.org> <44CD41EC.6030605@freebsd.org> <20060730233839.I27679@ganymede.hub.org> <44CDAA98.3030702@freebsd.org> <44CDE02F.4090604@dial.pipex.com> <44CE7DD0.9070902@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> <871ws1v261.fsf@photon.homelinux.org> <20060731220830.B27679@ganymede.hub.org>
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On 7/31/06, User Freebsd <freebsd@hub.org> wrote: > On Mon, 31 Jul 2006, Xiao-Yong Jin wrote: > > > Chris Whitehouse <chris@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> writes: > > > >> Alex Zbyslaw wrote: > >>> Counting portsnap and cvsup accesses is non-intrusive - i.e. nothing > >>> sent from local host - will count systems from any version of > >>> FreeBSD, but will never count everything because sites with multiple > >>> hosts may easily have local propagation mechanisms. But you will > >>> get an order of magnitude. However, how do you deal with systems > >>> with variable IPs? I don't know enough about the internals of > >>> either portsnap or cvsup to know if there is some kind of unique id > >>> associated with hosts. If not, then you'd wildly over count for > >>> many home-based, variable IP systems. > >> > >> Maybe not so many, my non-static ip hasn't changed since I signed up 3 > >> years ago despite turning off the modem for the odd day or > >> two. Another network I look after also hasn't changed in a year. > >> > > But one can't rely on that. You'll definitely see more than one ip > > associated with my laptop, if I move it around. > > > > A more reliable way that I can think of is generating a unique ID > > number when a system finishes installation or upon the first boot. > > However, it may involve some additional privacy problem. What do you > > think? > > How does Solaris generate its 'hostid'? Is it a hardware/sparc thing, or > software? > Generating a unique anonymous key is easy, proving why we need it is not. Ok, here it is, " ifconfig | sha256 | md5 ". 16^32 unique anonymous keys. Every host needs to have a NIC to send results so all ifconfig outputs will be different. Now... What does this solve and why do we need to add 32 extra bytes? (20 + 32) bytes * (10^7) = 495.910645 megabytes. The FreeBSD team would need a 6.6Mbit/s uplink to handle peak load assuming 50% of the hosts are set to UTC/GMT time and all trigger within 5 minutes of each other.... I'm not going to pay for that connection. -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/
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