Running the IP Resolution DTS Task

Article
11/12/2009

You use the IP resolution task periodically to resolve Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. This ensures that the Data Warehouse contains data that is as meaningful as possible.

When you start an IP resolution task, a cache of already resolved IP addresses is checked in an attempt to resolve the new IP addresses. If unresolved IP addresses remain after the cache has been checked, then the Domain Name System (DNS) server is checked. IP resolution typically has a 60 to 75 percent success rate. IP addresses are resolved in a batch file, which optimizes the connection with your DNS server.

When you start an IP resolution task, by default only the IP addresses without a domain name will be resolved. However, if you want to capture any possible domain name changes, you can choose to resolve all IP addresses. This option updates even the domain names already in the Data Warehouse.

Notes

You must use the full lookup option the first time you resolve IP addresses in the Data Warehouse. After you have performed a full lookup, you can perform incremental IP resolution to look up only new IP addresses.
If client IP addresses are translated to a single IP address, use either cookies or user names in the Web server log import for inferring users.

If users visiting your site do not use cookies or user names for inferences (either because they are absent or the users choose not to use them), then Commerce Server uses the client IP address and browser type to infer users. This method is not highly accurate: if the client IP addresses are translated to a single IP address (because, for example, users are using the same browser), then multiple users are bundled into one IP address. The IP resolution task then performs a lookup only on one IP address. This means that you will not get accurate domain information about all of the users visiting the site.
Use the following performance counters for this DTS task:
- Total IPs resolved
- Total IPs unresolved

To resolve IP addresses

Expand Microsoft SQL Server, expand SQL Server Group, and then expand the server on which your Data Warehouse is installed.
Right-click Data Transformation Services, and then click New Package.

Alternatively, if you are changing an existing package, right-click Data Transformation Services, click All Tasks, and then select Open Package. In the Select File dialog box, click the package you want to change, and then click Open.
On the Task menu, click IP resolution (Commerce Server).

In the IP Resolution Properties dialog box, do the following:

Use this	To do this
Description	Type a description for this task. The maximum number of characters for the description is 255.
Data Warehouse	Select from the drop-down list the Data Warehouse that contains the data for which you want to perform IP resolution.

In the Resolve IP Addresses section, do the following:

Use this	To do this
Incremental lookup	Select this option to resolve only IP addresses that have not already been resolved and those for which the last modified time exceeds the time limit set in the Number of days to cache results field.
Full lookup	Select this option to resolve all IP addresses.

In the Options section, do the following:

Use this	To do this
Local domain name	Type the local domain name of the Domain Name Server (DNS) that is the primary server used to resolve IP addresses.
Number of days to cache results	Type the number of days to cache resolved IP addresses. The default is 30 days. If you increase the default, IP resolution occurs more quickly. However, domain name changes might not be caught.
Number of seconds to wait before timeout	Type the number of seconds to specify how long the DNS server is searched before an IP address is marked as unresolved. The default is 10 seconds. If you increase the default, you will resolve more IP addresses, but IP resolution will take longer.
Number of lookup requests to keep in batch	Type the number of lookup requests to specify the number of IP addresses that are transferred to your DNS server in a batch. The default is 200; the possible range is between 10 and 99,999 requests.

In the Retry Properties section, do the following:

Use this	To do this
Number of retries	Type the number of times you want the task to retry connection failures to the Data Warehouse. The default number of retry attempts is 10.
Seconds between retries	Type the number of seconds you want the task to wait between retry attempts. The default time interval is 30 seconds.

Click OK.
On the Package menu, click Execute.

The Executing Package dialog box appears, showing the progress of your import. When the import process is complete, the Package Execution Results dialog box informs you that it completed successfully.
Click OK, and then click Done.

IP resolution is performed.
Run the Report preparation DTS task to organize the imported data into the designated OLAP cubes. For instructions about running the Report preparation task, see Running the Report Preparation DTS Task.

This data is now available for reports.

Running the IP Resolution DTS Task

See Also

Additional resources