Stats question: repeat downloads?

[WildeGeek]

I occasionally look at the raw logs on the web server for my show. Some days I see wierd patterns like the same IP address dowloading the same mp3 file 8-10 times within the span of a second or two. Sometimes this same address will download several files this way. The clients are usually one or a combination of these: MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0 MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1 NSPlayer/10.0 Windows-Media-Player/10.00These are always complete downloads of the entire file. As far as ISP and country of origin, they seem to come from all over.

Does anybody have any idea why this is happening? Is this some kind of client software bug?

[WyethDigital]

Do you also see Microsoft BITs in there? Or IE 7? Microsoft is now handling background downloads for everything in the same way that it handles it's OS software updates -- in numerous small hits.

For instance, when I (currently) put out a new show, my server side stats show between 40,000 and 60,000 hits on it a day! In reality, the real downloads equal about 1100 on day one, scaling downwards from there throughout the week (usually get between 1800 to 3000 real downloads/week -- we dropped off big time after our two and a half week vacation).

Eric

[dbwilldo]

If you are looking at your raw logs for mp3 downloads, I have found the following:

Hits = insane numbers that just can't be possible. Same as hits to your site.
Imcomplete Requests = partial downloads, partial plays on flash players, etc
Visits = actual downloads

I'm using a third party log reader called Weblog Expert (they have a free lite version as well) and it's giving me numbers I can deal with.

Another good judge I have found is feedburner stats, if you are using feedburner. I have found those to be more accurate for tracking downloads than awStats (stats package that my host offers).