IP2Location.com Releases Database to Identify IP's Geography

[Richard Clayton]

In article <p06020470bc0d03bddbbd@[66.149.49.5]>, R. A. Hettinga
<rah at shipwright.com> writes

>The IP2Location(TM) database contains more than 2.5 million records for all
>IP addresses. It has over 95 percent matching accuracy at the country
>level. 

        ie: almost 1 in 20 is wrong (that's 125,000 of them)

Now in fact the IP2Location FAQ on their website says that there are
only 55,000 records in the database (which just isn't enough, the CIDR
report says that there are 129K routes at the moment -- reducing to
90,377 if all providers properly aggregated them).

They also say that the inaccuracy is because of AOL etc providing
centralised dialup (ie: you can't tell which state people are in) but
this is nonsense too -- AOL's modem pool was 200,000 by 1997
        http://www.gihyo.co.jp/magazine/SD/pacific/SD_9706.html
and must be way bigger than that by now.

Pressing on -- this may not be crypto, but traceability is my specialist
subject, and it's the holidays so maybe the moderator will let this
through ?

One of the IP addresses that is wrong is my own home ADSL system
[80.177.121.10] which is apparently in Guhawati, Assam, India (and not
in Cambridge, UK after all!)

I can't see anything in the RIPE entry for the /15 to suggest that I'm
in the sub-continent :(
http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois?form_type=simple&searchtext=80.177.121.10

It's possible they're being fooled by tracing through BT's ADSL
infrastructure, but more likely it's a typo in their database :(

not very reassuring really

>IP2Location.com's products
>provide the geographic location of Web site visitors in real-time, enabling
>businesses to display localized content, bandwidth balancing, improve
>click-throughs and sales, prevent fraud, conduct site analysis and foster
>regulatory compliance.

Final struggling hope to get on topic ... at least India's crypto laws
don't seem too oppressive 

        http://rechten.kub.nl/koops/cryptolaw/cls2.htm#in

so I don't think I'm going to lose out too much if any website is dumb
enough to think that taking someone else's word for where I am located
is a useful thing to do.


Bottom line is that geographic location is a hard problem, and published
databases are full of errors and inconsistencies. However, failing to
accurately include that which is published doesn't impress me :(

-- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin


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