Uniques tracking by IP. Heavy server load?

[complete n00b]

Just a question, assume i have some 2 ghz celeron server with moderate amount of mem. What amount of uniques per day would affect performance of the server if I stored IP's in a mysql table and then searched it every new visit?

currently i use cookie tracking. any1 knows whats better?

thanks

[jatar_k]

>> then searched it every new visit?

that's where you start to run into a problem, it will get slow though I couldn't tell you when. There is not really any hard and fast rule because there are too many variables involved.

Why not add a new row for each one and then do the analysis later in a seperate process, it could be run nightly.

[complete n00b]

niiiiiiiiiize idea