Re: Hit-metering: to Proposed Standard?

• From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@liege.ICS.UCI.EDU>
• Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 17:32:20 -0800
• To: Paul Leach <paulle@microsoft.com>
• Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
• Message-Id: <9611211732.aa17378@paris.ics.uci.edu>

>>The other harm I mentioned is the implicit suggestion that "hit-metering"
>>should be sanctioned by the IETF.  It should not.  Hit metering is a way for
>>people who don't understand statistical sampling to bog down all requests
>>instead of just those few requests needed to get a representative sample.
> 
> Are you saying there's a way right now with the HTTP to do statistical
> sampling?

Yes.  Arrange for documents to expire at the beginning of some period,
cache-bust for that period and collect data, and at the end of that
period restore normal caching behavior.  Depending on how the period(s)
is selected, actual audience size can be estimated by extrapolating
from the data collected.

.....Roy

Received on Thursday, 21 November 1996 17:50:51 UTC