Connection Persona  The page focuses on the persona that a user gives off when they visit web sites.   This Persona is created based on how you are connected to the Internet, and which software you use.

Internet Access - The way an Internet user is physically connected to the Internet will effect the persona the user "exhibits" when visiting web sites.  The Internet user must have some kind of persona, in order for the web server to send web pages to the user.  This is also true with any other user applications which communicate with other online computers via  client server or peer to peer .

• Employer/University.  The Internet user is an employee or a student who has been given internet access through their employer or school ( referred to here as "sponsoring organization").  In most of these cases, the Internet user is connected to the sponsoring organization's LAN, which will have a dedicated Internet connection.  The persona given off by the user  depends on how their sponsoring organization has structured their network.
      - The user may access the Internet through a central proxy server, gateway, or firewall.  In this case "all" the organization's users may give off the same single persona (i.e. proxy.gateway.employer.com)
      - OR, the persona of the employee's individual workstation may be communicated.  In cases such as this, you might be able to recognize the employee or at least the department they work for.  A traceroute may also show where within the company the person works.
  If you see any kind of employer.com persona entries in web site statistics, a traceroute to the employer.com persona should definitely reveal how the employer is connected to the Internet (for more information see connection detective )
• Internet Service Provider (Paid Account) - The Internet user has purchased Internet access from an Internet service provider.  The Internet user will connect to the ISP's network at a POP (Point of Presence)  For Cable, DSL and dedicated circuits, the POP will be explicitly defined and always at the same location day after day.  Dial-up users are usually free to connect into any dial-up POP they want, but they will often choose the POPs which are within their phone company's local calling area in order to avoid/minimize phone company charges.  The user's persona will often reflect the geographic labeling most ISP's use at their POPs:    temp_IP_#.town.state.isp.com
  Note_1: In most cases, the user will receive a "dynamically assigned IP number" from a pool of numbers.  An IP number is allocated to the user for the duration of an online session.  When the session ends, the IP number is re-assigned to subsequent users.
  Note_2:  Some ISP are re-selling access to larger networks, yet maintain their own brand name.  For example an Internet User can have an Earthlink account, Earthlink email address, but give off the exact persona of a UUNET or PSI Dial-up customer depending on which "Earthlink modem number" he tries that day (Earthlink resells UUNET and PSI Access).
  Note_3: Many Internet providers keep a log of dial-up user activity.   They will know which logon_ID was associated with the dynamic IP address from each dial-up session.  Some ISPs will also have caller ID enabled on their modem ports, so they may also have the phone number you dialed in from.
• Internet Service Provider (Free Account) - Some companies are providing internet access for free. Internet users may have these kinds of accounts as their main account, or as a back-up account.  Since there is no payment being given for these services, it may be easier for people to assume a false identity when registering for this form of access.   There are numerous other ways for users to access the Internet anonymously, such as walk-up terminals at public libraries or airport terminals. The Popularity of free accounts can be witnessed in the HOT100 most popular web sites .
• AOL - AOL Users access through the Internet through AOL's Proxy gateways.  This effectively hides the geographic location of an AOL User. Also note that an AOL user can connect to AOL via the nearest AOL modem POP, or via a standard internet connection (See Accessing AOL via an ISP )
• Users may try to hide their connection persona using one of the methods described on my privacy page .

A web server keeps a second_by_second log of all user activity at the web site.   These raw access logs are usually too detailed to be studied by the average, overworked webmaster.  (Here is a 1 hour example of a raw access log from my web site )  Most web masters will run log analyzers which can create reports such as this .  Here is an another example from my web statistics which shows the hits made while using archive.org, language translators, and google searching.

see also: log analysis - Web Trends - complete example report - Try out all the options in the left column

Here are some example persona which illustrate the various types of Internet connections.   These examples were pulled from my own website statistics.

1. 1cust82.tnt1.flagstaff.az.da.uu.net      ( Dial-up access users on UUNET Modems)
2. 1cust36.tnt4.ottawa.on.da.uu.net
3. proxy2-external.hwrd1.md.home.com  (Cable modem users -@home)
4. ci48729-a.lusvil1.ky.home.com
5. cache-dk10.proxy.aol.com            (AOL Users located where?)
6. cache-rk08.proxy.aol.com
7. cache2.gw.utexas.edu         (Gateways at Colleges and employers)
8. nasdgw1.nasd.com
9. ns1.seagate.com
10. alproxy2.proxy.lucent.com
11. snet-gw.teleglobe.com
12. w3inet-phx.sps.mot.com   ( Motorola... sps = division acronym?, phx = phoenix?)
13. tera2.onlab.ntt.co.jp           (A lab at NTT, Japan  ? )
14. ippool173-206.corp.us.uu.net
15. laura060-0492.splitrock.net   (an employee named workstation ?)
16. david.linx.org                          (an employee named workstation ?)
17. www2.proxymate.com     (an anonymizer service)
18. 195.31.176.131        (Can traceroute or do a whois at geektools )
19. 63.78.173.3 -
20. vscooter.pa.alta-vista.net   (Search engine visitors)
21. crawl1.googlebot.com

Additional Resources:

• Thelist - provides a listing of ISPs all over the world
• Freedomlist.com - sources for free internet services (includes access, email, hosting)
• Privacy Analysis of your computer - How it works. (From privacy.net)
• Jens Johansson - Shows all the environment variables being passed back and forth between your web browser and web server.
• Working with Environment variables .

Note for my Alumni: Your referrals are always appreciated