Why would a customer's IP address not show on orders sometimes?

Question

In the Dashboard: System > Configuration > Sales > Sales...

I have "Hide Customer IP: No"

and this means the customers IP is shown on orders and invoices, etc...

This works on almost every order, but a couple orders just don't show an IP at all. This is very rare, and maybe 1 out of every 100 orders don't show an IP.

Well, what would cause this? I was asked why this is, but I just didn't have an answer, and now I'm curious.

Thanks all.

Answer 1

Most probably the order was made from the back-end.
The ip address on the order comes from the quote.
in app/code/core/Mage/Sales/etc/config.xml there is this:

<config>
...
    <global>
    ...
        <fieldsets>
        ...
            <sales_convert_quote>
                <remote_ip>
                    <to_order>*</to_order>
                </remote_ip> 
                ...
            </sales_convert_quote>
        ...
        </fieldsets>
    ...
    </global> 
...
</config>

The IP address on the quote is set in Mage_Checkout_Model_Session::getQuote()

if ($remoteAddr = Mage::helper('core/http')->getRemoteAddr()) {
    $this->_quote->setRemoteIp($remoteAddr);
    $xForwardIp = Mage::app()->getRequest()->getServer('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR');
    $this->_quote->setXForwardedFor($xForwardIp);
}

When creating an order from the backend Mage_Checkout_Model_Session is not used. Instead Mage_Adminhtml_Model_Session_Quote is used and there is no trace of remoteIp or remoteAddr inside it.