AOLserver

[wilderness]

Not much in the archives. At least in regards if it's a bot or not. Or perhaps a bot somebody setup on an aol page?
In any event:heads up

152.163.190.1 - - [28/Jul/2003:16:43:01 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 8229 "-" "AOLserver-Tcl/3.5.6"

this was the solitary log entry. There were other aol visitor entries however they were not close to this line.

Anybody have a clue

[balam]

64.236.188.181 - - [28/Jul/2003:04:04:37 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 22042 "-" "AOLserver-Tcl/3.5.6" 
64.236.188.181 - - [28/Jul/2003:04:04:37 -0700] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 22042 "-" "AOLserver-Tcl/3.5.6" 

Liked my homepage so much, they grabbed it twice... :)

You can read about the AOLserver at http*://www.aolserver.com/

I notice that the version number we've been visited by is 3.5.6. The latest 3.x version available, AFAIK and according to the above page, is 3.5.1. Is this discrepancy important? Don't ask me...

Knowing you wilderness, I don't have to point out that both IPs are AOL IPs, but for others, a quick look:

152.163.190.1 = pix-fw.wan.aol.com
64.236.188.181 = h-64-236-188-181.unassigned.aoltw.net

I'll make an educated guess that the first IP is an outbound IP from the firewall protecting their wide area network - "-fw.wan". Don't try this kind of wild extrapolation at home, kids...

As for the second one, uh, well..... Why, that's an exercise best left to the reader! :)

It would seem that for years, sites have been visited by differing versions of AOLserver, and most - but not all - visits seem to originate with AOL. (The AOL visits are way too sporadic to be some sort of verification check...) I've only glanced at the documentation, looking to see if AOLserver can "reach out" to the world and "spider" sites, but I haven't noticed anything yet...

Forgot to mention... In a *VERY* small sampling, it appears that AOLserver, or those behind it, only grabs homepages. (But that's also a statement I wouldn't put money on.)