| Term |
Meaning |
| Hits |
A hit is any response from
the server on behalf of a request sent from a browser. This includes any
response from the server, not only text files or documents. If, for example,
a HTML page has two images embedded, the server generates three hits if
this page is requested: one hit for the HTML page itself and two hits for
the two inline images. |
| Files |
If the user requests a document
and the server successfully sends back a file for this request, this is
counted as a Code 200 (OK) response. Any such response is counted
for as a file. Again, "file" here means any kind of a file. |
| Code 304 |
A Code 304 (Not Modified)
response is generated by the server if a document hasn't been updated since
the last time it was requested by the user and therefore there was no need
to actually send the files for this document. This happens if the browser
(or a caching proxy server between the browser and your web server) still
has an up-to-date copy of the page in it's local storage (cache) and therefore
can display the page without requesting the actual content. This technique
is used to reduce network traffic, but it also causes an inaccuracy in
the statistics reports regarding the number of visitors, because the browser
or proxy usually sends only one such a conditional request per user session
if it still holds an up-to-date copy of the file. However, the ratio between
files
and 304's reflects the efficiency of overall caching mechanisms
for at least those hits which made it's way to the server. |
| Pageviews |
Pageviews are all files which either
have a text file suffix (.htm, .text) or which are directory
index files. This number allows to estimate the number of "real" documents
transmitted by your server. If defined correctly, the analyzer rates text
files (documents) as pageviews. Those pageviews do not include images,
CGI scripts, Java applets or any other HTML objects except all files ending
with one of the pre-defined pageview suffixes, such as .htm or .text. |
| Other responses |
There are much more responses than
only Code 200 (OK) and Code 304 (Not Modified) responses,
especially in the coming standard, the HTTP 1.1 protocol specification.
For example, the server could generate a Code 302 (Redirected) response
if a page has moved, a Code 401 (Unauthorized Request) response
if access to the document is denied or a Code 404 (Not Found) response
if the requested page does not exist on this server. |
| KBytes transferred |
This is the amount of data sent
during the whole summary period as reported by the server. Note that some
servers log the size of a document instead of the actual number of bytes
transferred. While in most cases this is the same, if a user interrupts
the transmission by pressing the browser's stop button before the page
has been received completely, some servers (for example all Netscape web
servers) do not log the amount of data transferred but the amount of data
which would have been transferred if the user would have completely loaded
the page. |
| KBytes requested |
This is the amount of data requested
during the whole summary period. http-analyze computes this number
by summing up the values of KBytes transferred and KBytes saved
by cache (see below). |
| KBytes saved by cache |
The amount of data saved by various
caching mechanisms such as in proxy servers or in browsers. This value
is computed by multiplying the number of Code 304 (Not Modified)
requests per file with the size of the corresponding file. Note: Because
http-analyze
can determine the size of a file only if the file has been requested at
least once in the same summary period, the values for
KBytes saved by
cache and KBytes requested are just approximations of the real
values. |
| Unique URLs |
Unique URLs are the number
of all different, valid URLs requested in a given summary period. This
shows you the number of all different files requested at least once in
the corresponding summary period. |
| Unique sites |
This is the sum of all unique hosts
accessing the server during a given time-window . The time-window is hardwired
to the length of the current month. This means that if a host accesses
your server very often, it gets counted only once during the whole month.
Only the sum of the unique hosts per month is listed in the statistics
report. |
| Sessions |
Similar to unique sites,
this is the number of unique hosts accessing the server during a given
time-window. This time-window is one day by default for backward compatibility,
but it can be changed with the option -u or the Session directive
in the configuration file. For example, if the time-window is two hours,
all accesses from a certain host in less than 2 hours after the first access
from this host are lumped together into one session. All following accesses
more than 2 hours apart from the first access will be counted as a new
session. This way you may get an estimated number of how many sessions
are started on different sites to access your server. |
