Geolocation by IP address

General discussions and other topics.
8 posts Page 1 of 1
by wresnick » Thu May 24, 2012 10:20 am
As more and more websites use various forms of geolocation, I'm finding it to be a bigger and bigger annoyance. Whenever it's done by IP address, websites are telling me about their store or restaurant "near you" in Santa Rosa. I'm in Union City, 78 miles away. It's becoming less and less common for these websites to ask for my zip code and save it with a cookie.

That's fine if I'm using a laptop or WiFi and they don't want to hold onto outdated information. But unless I'm willing to buy a wireless adapter for each computer, I'll keep having this problem. I already have my entire house wired for 1000baseT and am not about to start using WiFi for desktops, and it's a bit silly to have adapters solely for geolocation purposes for a machine that does not move.

I'm not asking for an explanation of how blocks of IP addresses are allocated, or an explanation of why this is happening. It's already clear why the world thinks I'm in Santa Rosa. But I'm curious whether this has shown up on anybody's radar or if there's some simple solution (aside from changing ISPs, which I have no intention of doing.)
by thulsa_doom » Thu May 24, 2012 3:25 pm
Considering that IP addresses aren't intrinsically bound to an IRL location, the practice of geolocating by IP is somewhat half-baked to start with. We've had situations in the past where we have obtained new address space and geolocation services have started telling folks that our customers are in Canada or Spain. Le sigh.

I'm aware of not generally-applicable fix from the website visitor's side.
John Fitzgerald
Sonic Technical Support
by topcoder » Wed May 30, 2012 11:27 am
Wresnick,

I understand your frustration, a lot of websites use Maxmind or ip2location, for their IP Data. Once is free they other is pay and then theirs melissadata and some other startup now digital something. I plug in my IP and it shows up differently all over, no one database is that much better than the other. For example, when I go look up my IP here: IP Locator. It works great from my PC at home, but when I'm at work It's off by a few states.

I've been reading with HTML 5, it has built in GEO Location services and now users can set their own location and make changes to their browser location. When more browsers adopt this technology, things will be more relevant.

Here's an example: http://html5demos.com/geo , but of course it didn't work for me.

So now I do all my searches, when I look for something local, I normally just type in my ZIP CODE or city name, next to my search terms..
by dane » Wed May 30, 2012 11:40 am
Geolocation of IPs can be done two ways - by simply registration database for the address space, or by using actual science. :)

The former method works fine for a single location firm with a block of IPs registered to them. Think, an office building or small campus with IPs registered to that location. This example never occurs in the real world.

Instead, IPs are generally registered to the service provider, and routed across their core and edge networks to end-user sites, businesses or individuals. To geolocate these with any reliability, you need real science. Here's a few resources you may find interesting on the topic:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... etres.html

The references paper can be found here: http://static.usenix.org/event/nsdi11/t ... g_Yong.pdf

See also the Stanford TULIP project: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tulip/
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by virtualmike » Wed May 30, 2012 12:10 pm
I'm on an employer's VPN for most of the working day. Many services believe I'm in Reston, VA. I really don't care what movies are showing in suburban DC. :-)
by rcoaster » Wed May 30, 2012 8:52 pm
At work, Web sites "think" I am in Chicago usually, the head office area of the company that provides the network. It hasn't been a problem so far, just mildly amusing.
by wresnick » Thu May 31, 2012 8:48 am
topcoder wrote: Here's an example: http://html5demos.com/geo , but of course it didn't work for me.

So now I do all my searches, when I look for something local, I normally just type in my ZIP CODE or city name, next to my search terms..
I've come across that example before, and apparently I'm in Mountain View and Santa Rosa at the same time. Perhaps I should propose to websites that they try to use both, and if they find that the results are more than 50 miles from each other they should give up and ask for my zip code as they did in the old days.
by toast0 » Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:10 pm
dane wrote:Geolocation of IPs can be done two ways - by simply registration database for the address space, or by using actual science. :)

The former method works fine for a single location firm with a block of IPs registered to them. Think, an office building or small campus with IPs registered to that location. This example never occurs in the real world.

Instead, IPs are generally registered to the service provider, and routed across their core and edge networks to end-user sites, businesses or individuals. To geolocate these with any reliability, you need real science. Here's a few resources you may find interesting on the topic:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... etres.html

The references paper can be found here: http://static.usenix.org/event/nsdi11/t ... g_Yong.pdf

See also the Stanford TULIP project: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tulip/
I think I had looked through that paper (while reviewing someone's attempt to use their methods). Unfortunately their method of finding landmarks was pretty terrible. Basically they were assuming that websites which had contact information matching whois information for the domain were hosted at that location. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Also, it didn't really reflect the reality of routing on the internet. If my neighbors have AT&T DSL, and Comcast DSL, their network paths are wildly divergent from mine. In the Bay Area it might work, because there's lots of peering, but in the middle of the country, good luck.
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