untangling_the_web

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proxy servers. Also, it should be noted that the IP-to-Country Database seeks to
indicate the country where resources were first allocated or assigned and are not an
authoritative statement of the location in which any specific resource may currently
be in use. These cases are very difficult and sometimes impossible to map. However
at this moment the IP-to-Country Database is by far the most accurate way to
determine the location of Internet users in real-time." [emphasis added] Ignore the
username/password boxes and look for the demo query box on the right-hand side
of the page.
GeolP Country Lookup
GeolP City Lookup
http://www.maxmind.com/app/lookup
http://www.maxmind.com/app/lookup city
GeolP by Maxmind is a product that can be purchased; however, the Maxmind
website does offer two free demonstration options, one for country lookup and one
for city lookup. The country lookup is limited to 100 queries per month while the city
lookup is limited to 25 lookups per day (presumably per visitor's IP address). GeolP
claims to "use a number of Internet mapping tools to identify and correct IP
addresses where the end-user location does not match the ISP location on the
Whois record," but they do not go into detail about exactly how they do this. They do
claim they are 95 percent accurate in geolocating IP addresses .
NetGeo
http://www.caida .org/tools/utilities/netgeo/
NetGeo, from the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), takes
a completely different approach and one, frankly, that is less reliable. NetGeo
correlates both IP address and Autonomous System (AS) numbers to the three
major Whois databases at ARIN, APNIC, and RIPE and returns latitude/longitude
data for the city, state (or province, district, etc.), and country from the text of the
Whois record. The problem is, of course, that there is no guarantee that the physical
location of the server is the same as the physical location registered in the Whois
database. The site warns users it has not been updated and may give "wildly
inaccurate" results. I believe them.
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