title: How reliable is the IP address logged in an Apache access log?
body: <p>My website is suffering from an apparent bot which GETs a particular URL 5 times within a second, waits exactly 2 minutes, then repeats. The request is coming from the same IP address each time, and I have not observed any malicious payload, so I'm undecided on whether it is some form of spam bot. The User-Agent claims to be IE6, which is always suspicious in such an obviously non-human request pattern.</p>
  <p>Anyway, I have done a reverse lookup on the IP and have located a contact at that domain, but am I wasting my time trying to get in touch with them? If it's a spam bot, won't the IP address be spoofed? How common is IP address spoofing in HTTP spammers? Does the HTTP protocol make it difficult in any way?</p>