Server Log Mystery

February 27, 2004 1:50 PM

I check my server logs pretty frequently, and am always pleased by the variety of visitors my site gets. I particularly love trying to suss out who's reading the site at any given moment by deconstructing their IP address and/or machine identity. (Ex-coworkers, ex-bosses and ex-girlfriends always especially amuse me.)

One thing I don't love: a machine called "tide70.microsoft.com" is literally "viewing" my site close to 100% of the time - like, whenever I check, it's on. Sometimes it's joined by up to thirty other "tide*" machines, but tide70 is always there. I have my ideas and suspicions, but can anyone confirm for me what the tide series is up to?
posted by adamgreenfield to computers & internet (14 comments total)

check this out.
posted by tcaleb at 1:58 PM on February 27, 2004

tide70 is the employee NAT.

A spider possibly runs from here also.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:05 PM on February 27, 2004

check this thread out if you wanna block it.
posted by Hackworth at 2:12 PM on February 27, 2004

the_fire, an NAT is pretty much what I suspected at first, but the spider makes more sense: it's *always there*.

tcaleb, that article's registration only. Can you give me the gist of it? Thanks.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:15 PM on February 27, 2004

really, I found it on google, and I am definately not registered there. Weirdo.
posted by tcaleb at 2:20 PM on February 27, 2004

my bad, I must of have signed up at some point. I just cleared the cache and reloaded, and it certainly did ask for a username. huh.

basically, all it said, was that it is a spider from microsoft that wants to see what webserver everyone is using.
posted by tcaleb at 2:23 PM on February 27, 2004

Ahh, maybe it didn't like the deeplinking and dynamically blocked us? I am nearly positive I never signed up. I am positive I never paid for a subscription. Either way, sorry about that.
posted by tcaleb at 2:26 PM on February 27, 2004

Thanks anyway. What leaves me still scratching my head is this: wouldn't ascertaining what server software I'm running only require the occasional check-in? Why the eternal vigilance?
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:40 PM on February 27, 2004

I always thought it was MS' search bot.
posted by mathowie at 3:48 PM on February 27, 2004

MSN is apparently developing a completely new search technology right now, so they can get away from using Yahoo!. Wouldn't be surprised if they created the chattiest spider ever. Are they vioating your robots.txt? Implementing one of those to see what happens could be interesting.
posted by scarabic at 4:34 PM on February 27, 2004

I am positive I never paid for a subscription.
It worked for me after adam's comment!?!
posted by thomcatspike at 9:45 AM on February 28, 2004

thomcatspike, yeah I was really curious about it and looked into it more. I think they just really dislike deeplinking. After I cleared my cache it asked me to sign in, but without having an account, I went to their homepage used their search engine to get the article and it came up fine. Dumb policy.
posted by tcaleb at 3:45 PM on February 28, 2004

What search terms did you use?
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:39 PM on February 28, 2004

just the word 'tide70'. It should be the only result when you search from webmasterworld.

On google it is the 10th result. Ironically enough, this question is now result #3 on google.
posted by tcaleb at 1:25 PM on February 29, 2004