Server vendors are getting quite a lot of customer pressure to provide hit-counts that include what happens at caches. In the absence of a mechanism to do this, some servers are disabling caching simply to obtain hit counts, and we agreed that this is not good.
Most (but not all) of us agreed that it would not be possible to make hit-metering mandatory for caches, simply because there is no obvious way to enforce an anti-cheating policy.
Customers have asked for several kinds of hit-metering, with increasing levels of complexity and cost:
Netscape has internal specifications for (1) and (2?), and will write them up and circulate them to the subgroup.
ACTION ITEM: Ari Luotonen and Chuck Neerdaels will provide a proposed specification for hit-counting (and perhaps for access-log transfers).
Jim Gettys has some contacts with the demographics people who were keen on wringing more access-measurement information out of the web, and will find out more specifically what they think they want.
ACTION ITEM: Jim Gettys will grill the demographers.
Is this what prompted the Hallam-Baker draft on log file format?