How could traffic be in my logs with zero bandwidth used?

[trader]

We have suspicious high traffic from a foreign domain. It would be suspect even without the bandwidth issue but even odder since it's the only one in our Hosts log where no bandwidth is used. Actual report 4-1 to 4-7-06 is this: pages 777. hits 777. bandwidth 0.

Can anyone guess or know how and why it does not use any bandwidth at all?

[larryn]

Trader,

Did you check to see if they are HEAD or GET requests? HEAD requests only return the header and no content.

Larry

[trader]

I don't know how to access or use raw logs. Webalizer and AWstats does not seem to identify that kind of information.

Why would they bother to hit the site so often without wanting any content?

Now up to 1900 pages and 1900 hits with zero bandwidth so far in April. Visits are coming every few minutes from that domain, 24X7.

[Stefan]

Ftp into your site and look for a directory that is called LOGS. Dig into it, look for the file with the most recent date, and download it to your computer (don't bother with the error log for now). Open it with Wordpad or similar. Do a "find" and look for the offending referer. In the first part of the line it will say "Get" or "Head".

I don't know why it happens, but I've seen it occasionally. At least it's not using much in the way of bandwidth :-)

[ronburk]

Why would they bother to hit the site so often without wanting any content?

Example:
If I want to check to see whether content on a particular website has changed since the last time I looked at it, then I have to ask the web server, but I don't have to actually fetch the content of a page -- I just ask the web server if it's changed since a particular date.