1) Tracking – In addition with cookies, IP addresses can be useful for tracking individual computers or networks. Take example one of the worlds greatest tracking analysis websites—Google Analytics (aka Urchin). Using IP Based information, Google can track, look up past visits, know what pages you visited, and what pages you came from (using http refer). IPs can give the anonymous visitor a name and collect data on that name.
2) User Interactivity – Display a user online script or even develop an online chatting program based on IP availability. With Session Handling, you could have people interact with each other by classifying IPs and logged in users that match those IP Addresses. Majority of online games are based using IPs. Though Session Handling could also provide user interactivity alone..
3) Ban Hammer – The three most effective way of banning someone off your website is Email, Username, and IP Address. Email and username are only available if users have the option to register their name. IP Addresses can be recorded without the user knowing. The only backdraw to this is if you ban an IP thats networking 10 computers, all 10 computers will be banned. That is the only downside when using IP as a ban hammer (though used commonly across the web).
4) Exceptions – Want to make a private viewing site specific towards a network? IP Exception (along with Cookies) are excellent. Give people cookies, record their IP Address, show them a sneak peak of what you’re working on. Great for showing a specific client how much work has been completed (if your a web developer) or if your just showing a small crowd of people a video and not want to program a login script.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:45 am
Thanks for this post, answers a bunch of questions I was having.