Even though packet sniffing is not quite as popular as using Web Logs, Web Beacons and JavaScript tags, it is one of the most sophisticated ways of collecting web data. A packet sniffer is a layer of software that is installed on the web servers and runs "on top" of the web server data layer. Otherwise, it can also be a physical piece of hardware that is affixed in your data center, and all the traffic is then routed to your web server via the packet sniffer solution.
One of the vendors who provide packet sniffing web analytics solutions are Clickstream Technologies. Some sites, such as SiteSpect use interesting ways of leveraging packet sniffers, by using the technology for multivariate testing, thus eliminating the reliance on tagging a website to do the testing.
1. One has to follow five steps to collect data through packet sniffing:
2. The customer types your URL in a browser.
3. The request passes through a software- or hardware-based packet sniffer that collects attributes of the request which can send back more data about the Visitor to the packet sniffer.
4. Thereafter the request is routed to the web server by the packet sniffer.
5. The request passes through the packet sniffer back to the customer. The packet sniffer captures information about the page going back and stores that data. Some vendor packet-sniffing solutions attach a JavaScript tag that can send back more data about the visitor to the packet sniffer.
6. The packet sniffer sends the page on to the visitor browser.
The benefits of using packet sniffers as your data collection mechanism are as follows:
1. Since all data passes through the packet sniffer, it first eliminates the need to use JavaScript tags for your website, or in theory, to touch your website at all.
2. The time to market is a bit longer than with JavaScript tagging because it relies on IT to approve and install additional software and hardware in the data center. Despite that the time required is less than that required for other methods.
3. A huge amount of data can be collected instantly - much more than with standard JavaScript tagging. For instance, server errors, bandwidth usage, all technical data as well as page-related business data will be available. Packet sniffing provides the most comprehensive data possible.
4. The nature of the solutions is such that you will have the ability to always use first party for cookies.
Packet sniffing also has certain limitations, which data collectors should be aware of.
1. Most companies find it difficult to make a case for and convince the IT department to add an additional layer of software on the web servers or to physically install hardware in their high profile data centres and route all web traffic via these solutions. Packet sniffers also create a layer between the customer and the web page, something that can raise concerns and create hurdles.
2. Packet sniffing involves collecting raw packets of Internet web server traffic, which can pose two challenges: (1) Nontrivial amounts of configuration work with packet-sniffing solutions to sift through just the needed data from all the raw data. (2) The second challenge is regarding privacy. Raw data captures all data, including PII data like passwords, names, addresses and credit card numbers. Privacy requires minute stress testing and legal review.
3. Packet sniffing solutions still require JavaScript tags to truly collect all the data needed for optimal analysis. For example, packet sniffers would not get any data for cached pages (since no request is forwarded to the web server). Data from Adobe Flash files or Ajax might fail to be collected too. In rich Internet applications one deeply interactive file goes over to the visitor's browser and then many interactions happen in the visitor browser that are invisible to traditional packet sniffers (again because rich media interactions don't send back request to the server). Same holds true for core structure and metadata about pages via pure packet sniffer implementation.
No comments:
Post a Comment