streaming - What is a "unique viewer" for video? -

streaming - What is a "unique viewer" for video? -

our customers maintain asking add together unique viewers count our media streaming metrics, similar unique visitors in web metrics. provide wide variety of stats traffic, bandwidth , sorts of connections-related stats in our reporting panel 1 still in our wishlist long time.

each time unique viewers metric come question "what unique properties can rely on identify viewer?"

obviously, utilize ip. it's not much unique these days anymore. big groups of people may have net access single proxy mutual ip address. also, net providers may send visitor's traffic through different interfaces depending on traffic type (like splitting text , video). see asia-pacific , latin america isps.

we utilize properties http-based protocols hls. might etag header or combination of user-agent , ip address. need handle binery protocols rtmp , rtsp not quite possible.

we can assume property unique within 24 hours because largest info bucket in our reporting system. e.g. if rely on ip , guy has same ip during 2 days - we'll show him unique visitor both days.

so question - best ways calculate uniqueness of given media streaming client within given period of time?

any feedback highly appreciated. give thanks you.

video streaming http-live-streaming metrics wowza