IP address questions

[New Earth]

There is an IP address that showed up on my tracker (ISP is Verizon) on a website I own. When I track the IP, the city/location changes. The track is from Oct. 10th. At first it said it was from a certain town around here, then a week or so later, it changed to a different town. Then it went back to the original town, and is now at a completely different town. What does this mean and what is happening?

Also, has anyone ever heard of the ISP Covad Communications?


what does "domain" mean in this piece of info:

ISP: COVAD COMMUNICATIONS CO
DOMAIN: TALTY-LAW.COM

What role does some lawyer's website play in this? I have tracked down the lawyer who owns this website and he has 2 offices near me. Would this mean someone who works in his office is coming to my site?

[flashl]

1. Possibly

The movement of the ip address suggests it is distributed via a DHCP server.

AFAIK, Covad been around a very long time and is a reputatable ISP.

If using apache, access log will show ip addresses.

[New Earth]

2. thank you

but I have no idea what that means :( What is DHCP, what does it do, what does it mean? And what about apache/access log etc? Sorry I don't know this stuff well :(

[JPettus]

3. DHCP is a service

enacted by a server within the domain and subnet that allows computers to get an IP address when they first start up, rather than manually putting an IP address in to a computer for it to connect on the network.

So, a machine logs into the network when it starts up and it gets an IP address of 10.10.10.10 (for example) and shortly thereafter the DNS server and all the switches know that this machine name, located in this location is using this IP address so that traffic can be routed to it.

Leases are normally temporary and usually for five days or less, so if this machine goes offline for a period of a week or more, and then comes back up and connects to the network, this time that particular IP address might not be available and a new IP address is assigned to this computer's network card. Another computer a couple days prior likely signed in and got the first IP address and after a short time, the DNS server and all the switches know that this IP address is now assigned to this machine which is located in THIS location instead.

This really isn't a good place to get into the complexities of networking but essentially when you type in a URL to go to a web page, that URL is resolved by a domain name server to an IP address, which is eventually resolved from an IP address to the MAC address (hardware address) of the network card in that computer.

If you are really interested in networking, there are some excellent books that will give you a lot of information about it.

Hope that helps

[flashl]

4. Apache is the software used for most web sites

If your web site is "hosted" at a site like Godaddy, as a client of Godaddy you will have "control panel" access to your web site's information.

Depending on the control panel product, there will be an icon with a name "log" or a similiar name. Double-click the log icon to display its contents.

A little more information such as how your web site is hosted and type of control panel used to view its information will help us give a little more details.

[DaveJ]

5. Are you concerned who is visiting?

I would not be concerned if a lawyer is visiting. I believe many are of liberal mindsets and if your site is liberal it would make sense they'd visit. You could search for their office online (since their domain is not developed) and find out what they do.

[New Earth]

6. not concerned if it's a lawyer

I believe it is someone special to me, looking for me. My tracker shows the referral links. The referral links show it can only be one person :) So I am trying to figure out where they are. I guess you can say we are looking for eachother :shrug: So this person either works at this law firm, or was using wireless access on their network, right?

[DaveJ]

7. You're probably right.

Although I'm not sure how you know it's a particular individual, exactly, but the whole scenario sounds plausible. :)

[New Earth]

8. because...

the referral link is from a google search for a certain term only this person would look for. :loveya: