Web Trends filters problem

WT not filtering out specified IP addresses?

[ruthhelen]

Hi - first post on here, but this one is driving me nuts!

Trying to get WT to filter out a range of IP addresses, but no matter how I construct the exclude filters, the IPs are still appearing in the visitors list - even when I only include one IP and not a range. Am I missing something blindingly obvious?

Having read through some of the past posts on here, someone mentioned that for some filters to take effect, WT needs to be restarted - is this what I'm missing?

Help - am rapidly losing the will to live :O)

[cgrantski]

No you definitely do not need to restart WT for filters to take effect.

If you are getting your info from the visitors list, that *could* be your problem. It's a little complicated because I don't know exactly what you are seeing.

I'll assume that you are sessionizing by persistent cookie in the profile you're talking about. If you are, then the Visitor report is showing the cookie value. It seems to be showing you the visitor's IP for that visit, but it's actually showing you the IP string that is inside the visitor's cookie.

Example: If somebody or something first appeared on your site from one IP, that original IP probably was written into their cookie. If they later logged in from another IP, for example if they took their laptop home, the cookie will still contain that original IP, not the IP they're coming from right now. That's what you're seeing in the Visitors report.

If you want the Visitors report to show the actual IP of the actual visit, then you have to be ignoring cookies and sessionizing by IP/User Agent.

If what I'm describing is correct, then the IPs you want to filter are actually being filtered correctly, but the Visitors report is falsely letting you think otherwise because it seems to be showing you IPs.

[ruthhelen]

Hi cgrantski - thanks for the response.

Sadly, we are using IP/User agent on this particular profile, not cookies. Or at least, we were! It does look as though someone's been twiddling with the WT settings though (the machine is remote from me, and used by others in the organisation...). I'm going to have a proper look through all the global settings today...

Any other suggestions would be gratefully received :O)

[cgrantski]

Hmmm. I hope they did change that setting, because my explanation fit the situation so well. ;-) In fact, I had this same perplexity about 2 weeks ago. Let me know what you find out. The other possibility is the filter being buggy, in which case a really specific description of how you set up the address filter would be helpful.

[ruthhelen]

Sadly, no prospect of delving any deeper today. Haven't been able to access WT all day - we seem to have network problems, which are causing a lot of head-scratching and not a lot of activity amongst our network boys :O)

I'll have another go next week.

[ruthhelen]

OK - well, I think this issue has been resolved - or rather, it hasn't been resolved, but at least we know what the problem is now :O)

Seems we have an unpatched version of WT7.1 - so we are suffering from the hit filter bug - which is the one where 'address' hit filters don't work unless they are the first filter applied to the profile...

Wish I'd known that two weeks ago, but you live and learn...:O)

[cgrantski]

Ahhhhh I forgot about that. Sorry. I shoulda thought of it but have repressed 7.1 I guess.