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Basically, i need to know how long (on average) and ip address is used per user, this can be US-only stats or World-Wide stats, if you have a source please state it. If its your own data please let us know how you've come to this determination. If its off the top of yoru head (which is fine) please feel free to elaborate on it.

Because some routers stay on for days, weeks and months, this really throws speculative accuracy off as many people i am assuming are holding onto the same IP address for really long amounts of time. In the earlier days most people would have a new IP address when they reboot (dialup etc), but i fear this is no longer the majority.

this information is crucial to me in programming an interface that needs the average amount of time an IP address is used (on average) to determin a few things. Any form of information will help, also, im not interested in an alternative way of doing what im trying to accomplish, which is why i didn't want to get into that detail, but rather, just this time average for anyone who has any idea of it.

also, i tried google. i really could not find the stats, i suspect i don't know how to construct the query for this. also, this information is for non-mobile internet (by this i mean excluding cell phone, ipad, blackberry, iphone etc internet access). also, i am not tracking the person, just the ip address and how long it is in use by any given user until it changes or is unleased. thanks.

Found Suitable Answer:

Here is a suitable answer for anyone interested, if you find this answer useful please feel free to upvote. thanks.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101016070159/http://blog.comscore.com/2008/09/the_myth_of_static_ip_1.html

This report is written very well and has more than just average information, if you find other suitable reports or sources, please post to comments (since discussion/answering was closed), comments are accepted!

Bakr
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user51047
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4 Answers4

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It will likely depend on your audience - and in particular, how many of your users are users of mobile internet. I've found that my IP address on 3G networks changes very often, even though my home IP address doesn't.

You should also take into account users who will access your site (I'm assuming you're creating a web site; you've given us no context) from multiple locations, e.g. home and work.

Ultimately, the best source of information is reality - if you already have some version of the site running, you should measure it yourself.

Jon Skeet
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My estimation: once a month

I live in BC, Canada.

I'm basing this estimate on the fact that I've been working on a project for past month and a bit where I've needed to connect to my local server by explicitly typing my own IP address. It only changed once on me over this period of time.

I shut down my computer every night, so it has to reconnect in the morning.

mpen
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Keep in mind that people connect in so many different ways these days, that it is really hard to come up with exact numbers.

At home I have a static IP, at work I connect through a corporate firewall, which gives me a limited set of IP addresses, when I commute, I use dial-up where addresses are assigned from a large pool and my smart phone can use either dial-up or wifi. In short, as a single user, I have multiple IP addresses with very different life time and I reckon I am not the only one.

You will stand a munch better chance at tracking this via user login than IP.

Brian Rasmussen
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I'm no expert, but it depends on the type of connection they have. If they are using dial-up, they would have a different IP every time they reconnect to the internet. This could one or more times per day, all depending on the person. If they have mobile broadband, then it would change even more often. If they have a router which has a continuous connection, then there IP could remain the same for months on end. If they are connecting to the internet from a mobile device, there IP may change as much as 20 times per day.

In short, there is no way to tell. It all depends on your audience, and most people have different connection methods. They could change IP every 10 minutes, or every 10 months.

Alexander Rafferty
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