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Infoseek-GO Spider Codes Debunked------------------------------------------------------ by Dirk Brockhausen ------------------------------------------------------ Many Infoseek spiders originate from hosts that seem to bear a cryptic string of characters in their domain names, e.g. cca26101.infoseek.com, cca26111.infoseek.com, cca261e7.infoseek.com, etc. While this may seem somewhat weird at first glance, there is an underlying logic to it which can be discerned when viewing the third level domain in context with their original IP. Let's review this using the following entry pair as a practical example: cca26101.infoseek.com - 204.162.97.1 The string "cca26101" is made up of 8 (i.e. 4 x 2) characters: cc|a2|61|01. These twin characters can be converted to integers. Note that to do this we will not be working the decimal system here but, rather, the hexadecimal system which is based on 16. Within this system, the following assignments hold true: 0 : 0 1 : 1 2 : 2 3 : 3 4 : 4 5 : 5 6 : 6 7 : 7 8 : 8 9 : 9 a : 10 b : 11 c : 12 d : 13 e : 14 f : 15 Based on this table, we can convert the twin characters easily as follows: cc : 12 x 16 + 12 = 192 + 12 = 204 a2 : 10 x 16 + 2 = 160 + 2 = 162 61 : 6 x 16 + 1 = 96 + 1 = 97 01 : 0 x 16 + 1 = 0 + 1 = 1 The base being 16, it is with 16 that the values have to be multiplied. Merging these results, we obtain: 204.162.97.1 This is identical with the IP of cca26101.infoseek.com. Let's take two more examples to illustrate that we are not dealing with mere numerological coincidence here. cca261e7.infoseek.com - 204.162.97.231 cc : 12 x 16 + 12 = 192 + 12 = 204 a2 : 10 x 16 + 2 = 160 + 2 = 162 61 : 6 x 16 + 1 = 96 + 1 = 97 e7 : 14 x 16 + 7 = 224 + 7 = 231 Result: 204.162.97.231. cde2ccee.infoseek.com 205.226.204.238 cd : 12 x 16 + 13 = 192 + 13 = 205 e2 : 14 x 16 + 2 = 224 + 2 = 226 cc : 12 x 16 + 12 = 192 + 12 = 204 ee : 14 x 16 + 14 = 224 + 14 = 238 Result: 205.226.204.238 The lowest value would be 00000000.infoseek.com, the highest ffffffff.infoseek.com. This equates to IPs 0.0.0.0 and 255.255.255.255 respectively - which are, of course, the limits of any IP range. Thus, what may seem like utter nonsense to the uneducated eye, is shown to be a sequence of 4 integer blocks representing the spider's IP address. This text may freely be republished or distributed in unmodified form provided the following resource box is included intact either at the beginning or the end of the article and a complimentary copy or notice (link) is sent to the author at the address specified below: Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >, a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services. He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: < http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html > You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com (c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com All rights reserved. Downloaded at: < http://fantomaster.com/ > © 2004 HostWrap.com , All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication or publication of any materials from this Site is expressly prohibited. |
