According to my web server stats, rdu163-56-153.nc.rr.com accounts for about twice as many hits on this site as the rest of the Internet put together. My guess is it’s some sort of robot, maybe a screen-scraper looking for email addresses to add to a spam database or something. Or it’s some poor worm-infested ISS host looking for a vector; I get a lot of those, but I thought I was filtering them out of the stats. Or maybe it’s the Mailman from Vernor Vinge’s “True Names”.

So, rdu163-56-153.nc.rr.com, here’s your chance: identify yourself, or face the consequences. If you’re human, I’m sure you’re reading this — possibly several times a day. If not, then — sorry, Hal old buddy, I’m going to have to pull the plug.

Mystery Solved

It’s J-Walker. (Thanks for letting me know, Scott.)

What would be interesting is to figure out what causes my log stats software to identify a request as coming from a search engine robot, and then see if we can get it to also treat J-Walker that way — since that’s basically what it is.

I suspect my sort of confusion will become more common as more web traffic starts to be programs talking to programs, rather than people reading files.