Re: TCP port 7 traffic from DoubleClick

["C. Harald Koch" <chk () pobox com>]

In message <3781256D.1D291D53 () sover net>, Chris Brenton writes:
> The "claim" is that this is being done in order to serve you up data
> from the closest Web server to your location, but I've seen a number of
> concerns that this may be yet another attempt by DoubleClick to gain as
> much information on Web surfers as possible. 

IMHO, the claim is misguided (at best). They claim two things:

1) They're doing load balancing on their servers. There are better ways...
2) They're serving ad images from the closest server. There's no reason to
   attempt to do this, however: 
   - The RTT on the echo connection swamps the image download time, and
   - The RTT on the TCP handshake swamps the    mage download time
   - Some/Many/Most people have TCP echo turned off, so no useful data can be
     collected.

In other words, I don't think they can accomplish what they claim to be
attempting. OTOH, never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by
stupidity...

> Speaking of which, has anyone noticed what Altavista has been up to
> these days?

Speaking of which, I saw these in my outbound logs a few days back:

my.host.com -> stats.hitbox.com:12343

I haven't tracked down the specific source yet, but it's probably either a URL
or a JavaScript that is logging hit-counts for a page. The question is, as
always, what else is it logging? :-)

-- 
C. Harald Koch     <chk () pobox com>

"It takes a child to raze a village."
                -Michael T. Fry