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m-lab / ndt

Network Diagnostic Tool
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client_application field populated with large hex values #74

Closed gfr10598 closed 7 years ago

gfr10598 commented 7 years ago

From Jan 2016 through April 2016, a modest number of ndt tests (~10 thousand) have 8 byte hex values in the client field. Do we know why? https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/results/api-appsbackup-pa:bquijob_4ba73efd_158d4a51fe3?pli=1

pboothe commented 7 years ago

The client field is freeform text submitted by the user. It could be being used as a foreign key into a database we don't know about. I know that something like this was done for the "measuring schools" project that OTI did.

critzo commented 7 years ago

Sorry I hadn't seen this thread sooner, but I can confirm that Peter's suspicion is correct. We used this field for our school analysis pilot. The random field was generated and stored client side and then used to query the database later to associate test originating from specific clients. It worked quite well from my perspective. This was using the ndt c client.

On Dec 7, 2016 3:42 PM, "Gregory Russell" notifications@github.com wrote:

Closed #74 https://github.com/m-lab/ndt/issues/74.

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