What are the drawbacks of using gethostbyaddr() to identify users in PHP?

Using gethostbyaddr() to identify users in PHP can be slow and unreliable, as it relies on DNS resolution which can be blocked or slow. A better approach is to use a combination of session cookies and server-side validation to identify users. 

// Set a session cookie to identify the user
session_start();

if (!isset($_SESSION['user_id'])) {
    $_SESSION['user_id'] = uniqid(); // Generate a unique user ID
}

$user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];

// Validate the user ID on the server side
// For example, check if the user ID exists in a database of registered users

Keywords

gethostbyaddr identification users PHP drawbacks

Related Questions