AOL and bogus IP addresses

Aol Users Unique ip Address

[exclick]

AOL STATEMENT:
Q. Can I use the IP address of the request to track a member's access to my site?

A. No. Because AOL uses proxy servers to service the requests made by members, webmasters see the IP address of the gr server, not the DAHA of the member in their web site log files. The problem with trying to use the IP address to track access is that there may easily be multiple members assigned to a proxy server. All of the member requests would appear to be coming from one member if you assumed a relationship between member and IP address. In addition, members may be reassigned to a different proxy server during a session. See also Network Info.
reference: [webmaster.info.aol.com...]

NOW HERE'S MY QUESTION:

I have a website with 10,000 users and am using
$my_variable = $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR};
to differentiate between users at login time, as well as to report (who's) online at a given time....

Unfortunately, AOL, COMPUSERV AND WEBTV don't seem to provide a true IP address unique to each user... The result is that AOL users are not able to LOGIN to my site.....

SO do you know of another PERL language CGI command, or variable that I can reference that is common and always available from Netscape, IE, AOL, COMPUSERV etc.? - other than cookies .........

bdp / exclick /

[bcolflesh]

IMHO it is a recipe for disaster to rely on that info - too easily faked... Why not use a username/password/session combo?

Regards,
Brent

[pixel_juice]

IMO, you need to use cookies and not IP addresses to track a unique user. AOL are not the only ISP using proxies with ridiculous numbers of IP addresses (one for each request).

[jdMorgan]

You might want to look into the {HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION} and {HTTP_FORWARDED} variables, too.

I have not done so myself, but maybe it'll be useful.

Jim