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Reverse DNS
Servers usually record visitor information by storing
their IP address, not the site name of their Internet site.
Thus, in many webserver logs you will see something like "123.123.123.123"
rather than "www.accrue.com" to identify a particular website,
the "123.123.123.123" number representing the Internet Protocol
address of the particular webserver.
However, in addition to IP addresses being intelligible
only by machines, Hit List requires the site name of a visitor
to allow you to gather data for certain report Elements (ie
"Most Popular Visitor's Countries", "Most Common Visitors
(Site Names)", etc.) If your server is recording IP addresses,
you can have Hit List find the matching site names (a "Reverse
DNS lookup") as it imports data from your log files into the
database. Even if you donÍt turn this option on in Options/Updates,
each report may be instructed to lookup site names anyway
by checking the "Lookup site names" box when in Design mode
under the Options tab.
Before Hit List begins looking up IP addresses,
it first attempts to confirm a working DNS by querying for
www.microsoft.com. If that fails, it tries www.netscape.com.
If both of these fail, Hit List aborts the lookup process.
This can occasionally causes a problem for intranet sites
that do not allow external lookups or rely on a firewall and/or
proxy servers. If this applies to your site, you can ïfakeÍ
Hit List by adding www.microsoft.com to your HOSTS file with
any IP address you like. See your Windows documentation for
more information on the HOSTS file and how to configure it.
IP addresses can be converted into site names both
when the data is imported or when the report is run. Once
a site name is resolved from an IP, it will never be looked
up again. If a name cannot be resolved after two attempts,
Hit List will give up and never attempt to look it up again.
In some environments, web pages cannot be accessed
directly but must be requested from another machine (a "proxy"
server, such as Microsoft, Netscape or Novell Proxy). If this
applies to your site, you must tell Hit List the name or IP
address of your proxy server. Enter either the name of the
proxy machine (e.g. BigProxyServer) or its IP number (e.g.
123.456.789.012). If your proxy server responds to a port
other than 80, add a colon and enter the port number (e.g.
BigProxyServer:8080 and 123.456.789.012:8080). While this
does not directly affect DNS lookups, Hit List will bypass
its usual test for an active DNS if a proxy server is specified
under Options/Advanced.
Some web servers can resolve IP addresses into
names when they log requests. However, doing so is usually
not recommended because the lookup can increase critical response
time (and use more resources on the webserver that might otherwise
be used to serve up more content to visitors). Nonetheless,
converting IP addresses into human-understandable names increases
readability of Hit List reports, makes it possible to determine
which country a request comes from and determine the type
of organization the user belongs to.
If I'm not getting DNS lookups at all, how do
I configure my machine to do this?
What Hit List does for reverse DNS lookup is simply to
use the Windows Control Panel DNS settings (control panel/network/protocol/tcp-ip/DNS
tab) to have the OS query your DNS server to find out what
computer corresponds to the IP(s) at issue. If your DNS Server
doesn't know, it typically asks other DNS servers on the Internet
for this information - if it doesn't find out, it will return
no value for the IP, which Windows (NT/98/95) then passes
back to Hit List.
Hit List puts these items in the iIP table in the
database. If you look at this table (opening up the database
in Access97 or doing a query against this table in SQL Server/Oracle)
you will see two columns among others, that have the visitor's
IP in the first column and the resolved sitename in the next
column. Hit List tries to resolve these typically when updating
a database (assuming the "look up site names" box under Options/Updates
is checked) and then when running a report (ie Executive Summary,
assuming the "look up site names" checkbox is checked under
the Options tab in the report, when in Design mode).
If after two passes with the report trying to resolve
these IPs, Hit List still can't get the sitename from Windows/your
DNS server, it will simply put in the IP for the sitename
and move on. It won't try to repopulate the sitename column
for these values until the database is removed/cleared out
completely, or if you ran some sort of query that cleared
out this column (at which point the next time you ran a report,
Hit List would presumably try to look them up again - NOTE
- Doing this or other queries in the database that alter
Hit List data is UNSUPPORTED!)
The only other setting in Hit List that might be
at issue is under Options/Advanced, where if you have a Proxy
Server named, this setting usually forces Hit List to use
that setting for DNS requests, and if you don't have a proxy
server but have filled in this setting, you might not get
DNS results.
Ultimately if the IPs aren't showing up as sitenames,
it may mean one or more of the following:
1) your DNS server simply doesn't have this information;
2) your DNS server can't resolve these IPs due to the firewall
or it can't talk to other DNS servers to get this information;
3) your DNS server's database hasn't been "refreshed" recently
(to my understanding, this is done on a fairly regular basis);
4) there isn't a good network connection between your Hit
List NT machine and the DNS Server named in the Control Panel;
5) something else unique to your machine or network configuration.
How can I keep my Windows95 computer from 'locking
up' when Hit List does the reverse DNS lookup?
Check which version of Windows 95 you have under
Control Panel/System, and go to the link below that corresponds
to your version:
For Windows 95, Version A users, try Updates for Windows 95, Version A
For Windows 95, Version B users, try Updates for Windows 95, Version B
For Windows 95, Version C users, try Updates for Windows 95, Version C
If these fixes are still unsuccessful after installing
them, rebooting and trying again, you might try the following
Registry hack to allow reducing the number at which Hit List
asks the OS to perform Reverse DNS lookups at once:
NOTE - The following is a method of editing
the Windows Registry. Please have only a certified Windows
Technician perform the operation below to prevent problems
from occurring. Marketwave cannot assume liability for problems
arising from improper Registry editing.
To modify the # of simultaneous reverse DNS lookups
in Professional and Commerce when using Windows 95/98:
Close Hit List
Go to Start/Run, type in "RegEdit" and hit OK.
Go to hkey_local_machine\software\marketwave\marketwave
hit list
Right-click on that key and choose New ... Key. Enter DEBUGGING.
Hit Enter.
Right-click on the new DEBUGGING entry and choose New...String
Value.
Enter MAX_DNS_LOOKUPS as the value name. Hit Enter.
Double-click on MAX_DNS_LOOKUPS and set the VALUE DATA to
the # of simult. lookups to do (remember that the default
for NT is 32 and 16 for Win95). Hit OK.
Close regedit.
Restart Hit List.
Final Comments:
Ultimately, the final way to "fix" any reverse DNS problem
is to use Windows NT 4.0, the only operating that is specifically
designed to handle large numbers of DNS lookups (Windows NT
3.51 has a bug that prevents reverse DNS at all and will require
turning it off as well).
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