Streaming Media Supplement sa2150 and sa2250

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Chapter 10 Logging and Monitoring
• Media-IXT logs show correct information.
Live content
• RealProxy’s proxy.log on a child cache shows live split, provided that the origin RealServer allows
splitting for that content; on a parent cache proxy.log shows live passthrough.
• Media-IXT does not log live RealNetworks content.
See RealProxy documentation for RealNetworks’ definitions of demand cache hit, demand passthrough, live
split, and live passthrough.
The client_GUID field in RealProxy and RealServer logs
Origin RealServers maintain a log file called rmaccess.log. One logging field that appears both in
rmaccess.log, and in the RealProxy component of Media-IXT’s proxy.log file, is the client_GUID
field. The client_GUID field records a unique user ID that exists for every RealPlayer. Because of privacy
concerns, this field only records a meaningful value if the RealPlayer user has chosen to allow this.
By default:
• the Send RealPlayer GUID to RealServers option is disabled in RealPlayer.
• in the client_GUID field of proxy.log, RealProxy logs all zeroes
• in the client_GUID field of rmaccess.log, the origin RealServer logs random, unreliable information
If the RealPlayer user enables the Send RealPlayer GUID to RealServers option in Realplayer:
• in the client_GUID field of proxy.log, RealProxy logs the correct value
• in the client_GUID field of rmaccess.log, the origin RealServer logs the correct value
The RealPlayer user follows enables Send RealPlayer GUID to RealServers in the Preferences menu.
To enable the Send RealPlayer GUID to RealServers option on RealPlayer:
1. In the Preferences menu, choose Support, then choose Send RealPlayer GUID to
Realservers
About the cgid and caun fields and RealNetworks
Client players send a unique player identifier, cgid, with every request for content. To protect user privacy,
recent RealPlayers send zeros instead of the actual cgid value, by default. This is configurable, but one should
assume that the value of this field will be zero when it comes from a RealPlayer.
Similarly, when content requires authentication, the player sends caun, the authenticated user name; but
RealNetworks software does not make the value of this field available, out of concern for user privacy. Lacking
a value for this field, Media-IXT substitutes the cgid value here; where the client is RealPlayer, this is usually
zero anyway, as explained above.
About the prcb field and RealNetworks
prcb gives a value for bytes retrieved from cache. It would be natural to assume that when a client requests
content that is not in cache, that this value is zero for the entry corresponding to the streaming of that file. This
is not necessarily the case for RealNetworks content, though. Here is what happens:
For performance reasons, Media-IXT makes more than one connection between RealProxy and Traffic Server
as content is requested and retrieved. These connections are staggered; because Media-IXT begins caching
content in response to the first connection, the subsequent connections retrieve some content from cache.
NOTE The Send connection-quality data to RealServers option in the Preferences menu has no
effect on the client_GUID logging field.