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Google's "research on network latency discovery".

Milly [PersonRank 10]

Monday, October 10, 2005
18 years ago

Google is using the prefetch feature (in Firefox/Mozilla browsers) to conduct "research on network latency discovery".

Some SERPs are 'web-bugged' with links to pages like this :-

http://network-latency-discovery.l.google.com/
http://mar.nld.l.google.com:81/hit?2070581323

Which are clearly not meant for human eyes, saying only :-

"Thank you for participating in our research on network latency discovery!"

The logs below show what was prefetched with a simple search for [test]. That happened to be on Google Canada, and I don't know how often and domain/country widespread it happens.

Interesting. Perhaps they're in league with the NSA? ;) ...

http://news.google.com/news?q=nsa+latency+patent

-------Log---------
Requested URL: http://www.google.ca/search?&q=test , but this lot silently prefetched too (note the X-Moz: prefetch header) :-

http://network-latency-discovery.l.google.com/

GET http://network-latency-discovery.l.google.com/ HTTP/1.1
Host: network-latency-discovery.l.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB;
rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Keep-Alive: 300
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.google.ca/search?q=test
X-Moz: prefetch

HTTP/1.x 302 Found
Content-Type: text/html
Location: http://mar.nld.l.google.com:81/hit?2070581323
Server: NetworkLatencyDiscovery
Content-Length: 175
Connection: close

http://mar.nld.l.google.com:81/hit?2070581323

GET http://mar.nld.l.google.com:81/hit?2070581323 HTTP/1.1
Host: mar.nld.l.google.com:81
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB;
rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Keep-Alive: 300
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.google.ca/search?q=test

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Length: 309
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: close
-------Log---------

Milly

http://www.iMilly.com/google-cookie.htm

dislike_it [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

my list...

es.nld.l.google.com – 138.100.12.149
mar.nld.l.google.com – 128.8.126.69
was.nld.l.google.com – 12.17.136.137
cn1.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.201.65
cn2.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.33
cn3.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.25
cn4.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.93
cn5.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.201.77
cn6.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.61
cn7.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.21
cn8.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.45
cn9.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.89
cn10.nld.l.google.com – 219.243.200.81
network-latency-discovery.nld.l.google.com – 64.233.179.216

any other known ?

Jim Hill [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

i do not really understand the above, but wish to report that my Firefox just tried to send outgoing to
219.243.200.33:81

KPF4 notified me and i denied it.

i entered the address at www.nwtools.com
and found
China Education and Research Network Center
Tsinghua University
Beijing

googling for
firefox "219.243.200.33"
found only this page.

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