What netcraft says about accuracy of the reported webserver: *How do you perform the operating system detection ?* ------------------------------
Netcraft determines the operating system of the queried host by looking in detail at the network characteristics of the HTTP reply received from the web site. The reported operating system may be different to the one you expected because: - The site is using a *web proxy cache*, such as Novell BorderManager FastCache <http://www.novell.com/bordermanager/>, Inktomi Traffic Server <http://www.inktomi.com/products/traffic/tech/reverse.html> or a server running the open source Squid <http://squid.nlanr.net/>software. In this situation we will be connecting to the reverse web proxy rather than the originating web server, so will detect the cache's O/S rather than the web server's. Some proxy caching systems add headers to web server responses, such as the standard "Via" header. If the "Via" or "X-Cache" headers are found we report that the site is proxied. - The site is using a *server load balancing device* (SLB) like Cisco Web NS<http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/contnetw/ps789/products_data_sheet09186a00800921a5.html>, Resonate Central Dispatch<http://www.resonate.com/prod_centr_disp.html>or BIG/ip <http://www.f5.com/products/>. Some of these SLBs handle the TCP connection themselves, so we detect the SLB's operating system. Others use TCP/IP packet level Network Address Translation techniques, where we detect the operating system of one of the back-end web servers. - The site is using a TCP connection-level proxy *firewall*, such as provided in the TIS Gauntlet <http://www.tis.com/research/software/>, BorderWare <http://www.borderware.com/>, Raptor<http://www.axent.com/AXENT/Products/RaptorFirewall>, CyberGuard <http://www.cyberguard.com/> or IBM SecureWay<http://www.ibm.com/software/security/firewall/>firewalls, or some other kind of HTTP level proxy. In these cases we will receive data from the intermediate machine rather than the web server, so detect the intermediate machine's operating system. - The site load shares across multiple servers using different operating systems with *round robin DNS*. In such cases each query might detect a different operating system. - The site has changed the default configuration of their TCP/IP stack, perhaps for performance reasons, or have an unusual LAN environment. - We made a mistake. If you see an operating system & web server combination reported that you know to be wrong, please e-mail us<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 4:51 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Hendra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > The article told a story about Virtual Map, the company behind > > streetdirectory.com, who's in the midst of migrating its servers > > infrastructure from Linux to Windows Server 2008. > > [snip] > > Right now, their website isn't even responding. > > I wonder if they're really running linux. > http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.streetdirectory.com > Don't think apache 2.0.59 is current on fc5, mandrake or fbsd. >
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