Does anyone know of an efficient method for determining the physical location of a user based on their IP address? This isn't for any sort of fraud protection, so it's not critical that it be 100% accurate... It's just for a log analyzing script that I had written a while back... I thought it would be neat to add a user's location to one of the fields.

I know this can be done, I just which I knew how ;)

Well, you do a reverse lookup on the IP. And, then do a WHOIS on the domain.

Or, do a WHOIS on the IP, but that would require knowing which registry it's in.

Originally posted by JTY
Well, you do a reverse lookup on the IP. And, then do a WHOIS on the domain.

Or, do a WHOIS on the IP, but that would require knowing which registry it's in.

Doing a whois on the canoncial host name of the IP wouldn't help... that would just provide info on where the owner of the IP's main location is (if you do it on an AOL IP, it will always tell you that the address is in Dulles, VA... etc)

Querying whois.arin.net with the IP address doesn't seem to be accurate either.

It's almost impossible to determine specific location using the IP address...

Originally posted by MTG
It's almost impossible to determine specific location using the IP address...

Well, obviously it wont be accurate 100% of the time... but as I recall, there was a time when 2checkout would send you the IP's location and % accuracy along with the order confirmations. I guess I'm just wondering how they did it. Maybe I should get in to contact with them.

Maybe they stopped providing this info, because of their low accuracy % :D

Originally posted by MTG
Maybe they stopped providing this info, because of their low accuracy % :D

I wouldn't be surprised, heh. But as I said, I'm not using it for anything mission-critical like fraud protection, so I wouldn't have to worry about it like they did ;)

I found http://www.networldmap.com/TryIt.htm has some interesting results from an IP address.


Lats...

Well, I tried it with my IP (I am in UK) and it told me that I live in Washington D.C. :eek:

It got me city, state... And I live in a pretty small town...
Approx 30,000 people... Pretty amazing b/c my Visual Trace leaves me in Columbus, GA where my ISP's Datacenter is...

I wonder how they do it :D..

http://dnsstuff.com has a NetGeo IP lookup thing

What I do is go to http://www.arin.net and do a whois. It will tell you about the owner of the IP. Simple :)

I tried the same with APNIC, but couldn't find an easy way to find the owner for that IP. :(

The trick is to use a combination of several methods.

1) Simple lists (yep, you heard me the right)

2) Reverse look ups on the IP

3) Router information (BGP, EXGP)

4) Trace routes

5) LOC DNS records

Start from the bottom with LOC DNS records, and work your way up if that method doesn't work on the specific IP.

For example if the IP in question does not have a LOC record, then do a trace route - find the nearest hop and do a LOC DNS record lookup on that one, etc.

Use NeoTrace.

Originally posted by iamdave
Use NeoTrace.
How do you query the results of a NeoTrace output?


Lats...