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I have a variable
$offset = abs(crc32($_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"]) % 500);
and I do not understand it’s place in the script. All it seems to do is generate a random number based on the server name (e.g. http://www.example.com). Is that a correct interpretation of this variable?
Thanks
crc32 creates a Cyclic redundancy check of the name, and then moding by 500 further reduces it to a number between 0 and 499. The first part is basically a signature of the server name – it’s not a random number exactly (in it’s original form CRC could be used to rebuild data that got corrupted), it’s being used more like a hash here. The second part is reducing the size/scale of that hash so that every server that visits gets a number between 0 and 499. The hope is that it’s rare that number is the same for two servers, although there’s no real guarantees.