Which number is the real viewer count?

[Claudio_Rodriguez]

Hello everyone! We have been using Wowza Media Server through a third party service provider for a while now. We have been getting our viewer counts through a simple script they provide for real-time, and after the show, we get the parsing made on the log by Sawmill. On our last show, it says “Unique IPs: 1400+”, and “Unique Client IDs: 3000”. Now, the way I see it, by reading the logs, a single IP (user) creates several Client IDs as he leaves the page and then returns, or changes quality, or just needs to recreate the stream for some reason, therefore the real user count is Unique IPs. Am I correct in thinking this?

Thanks in advance.

[Jason_Hilton]

Hi,

We have a How to gather user streaming statistics article.

You could use this to get streaming statistics. Depending on your app server, there could be some cookie you can use.

Jason

[Zoran]

Hello,

It is possible that you have several client connections coming from the same IP because they might be in the same network, behind an internet router. This way, all those clients have different client IDs, but are connecting from the same IP.

Zoran

[Left_Chal]

Any ideas how to count unique views ?

[Claudio_Rodriguez]

Hello,

It is possible that you have several client connections coming from the same IP because they might be in the same network, behind an internet router. This way, all those clients have different client IDs, but are connecting from the same IP.

Zoran

That’s definitely not the case because 1) the difference is too large (1400 to 3000), and 2) I consumed the stream from my home, and even with a single computer playing it, and without closing/reopening the browser it created 3 client IDs in the logs. Every time an IP/user requests the stream, it creates a new client ID. Also, the different client IDs usually coexist at the same time, since a stream takes some time to be destroyed after a new one is created in normal operation, therefore you have high numbers of concurrent streams, while the real-time concurrent users reading gives the real number. That’s why I took the Unique IPs as the real metric. I contrasted them against Comscore’s statistics and they seem to match.

As to the “adding a uid GET parameter”, we don’t have access to the Wowza server itself, since a third party is providing it. I’ll see if I can ask them to implement that, and we’ll send them a uid.