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rampguy · Dec 13, 2003, 10:39 AM

I'm looking for a good IP to location service, and there are literally dozens. Some of the ones I've looked at are:
-maxmind.com
-geobytes.com
-ip2location.com
etc.

the prices are radically different, and I imagine so is the quality of the data but I have no way of finding that.

(Basically if I enter an IP address it will tell me the location, lat/long, organization, etc).

Does anybody have any experience with this?

Thanks,

Alex

kampl · Dec 19, 2003, 07:33 PM

I'll byte. I've looked into services like what you are talking about. They can't really get you as close as you want from a longitude by lattitude perspective. I'm in Boston, but they have my POP as Lowell or Waltham IIRC (can't remember which). Not exactly on the mark but close. I would assume they have an idea of what IP address ranges are being used in various parts of NOCs. With that, I stick to using ARIN for where things generally are and investigate from there. And it's free as well.

ghporter · Dec 20, 2003, 09:15 AM

It used to be a big thing with Unix sysops to be almost (maybe not almost) anal about how much information they put out to the world about their servers, including Lat/Long, elevation, street address, and so on. There were several "clearinghouse" services that allowed people with simple web connections to investigate this data, but I haven't seen any of them in several years.

Is that the sort of thing you were looking for?

rampguy · Dec 20, 2003, 10:27 AM

That's exactly what I'm looking for.

Any ideas? I just bought the ip2location.com database for $500 but it's not perfect.

-Alex

The Ayatollah · Dec 20, 2003, 12:35 PM

what are you trying to do, spam everyone in an area or flood them with more junk mail?

rampguy · Dec 20, 2003, 04:37 PM

Why the attitude?

I'm just trying to find out where IP addresses (of site visits) are located, in as precise detail as possible.

-Alex

kampl · Dec 20, 2003, 10:26 PM

Originally posted by GHPorter:
It used to be a big thing with Unix sysops to be almost (maybe not almost) anal about how much information they put out to the world about their servers, including Lat/Long, elevation, street address, and so on. There were several "clearinghouse" services that allowed people with simple web connections to investigate this data, but I haven't seen any of them in several years.

Is that the sort of thing you were looking for?

Not to be adversarial, but when have you seen such a thing? I have op'ed *nix servers since the mid-eighties and have never heard of such a thing. I don't completely disbelieve what you say, but I have never known a sysadmin to distribute such data to the public, nor did any of them have such data available to them save for recently using GPS. And with that, none of them wanted to pinpoint their datacenters.

ghporter · Dec 21, 2003, 05:47 PM

My exeprience may have been a fluke of the time I actually got online. At college in 91-95, I had access to some interesting stuff in the computer lab. After a bit of fumbling I figured out how to use the Linx browser while logged into a VAX machine from the lab's network (thinnet-connected 80286 PCs, but that was all it took). I guess the sysops I was getting information from were just as "gee whiz'ed" about the Internet as I was.

kampl · Dec 22, 2003, 04:47 PM

Originally posted by GHPorter:
My exeprience may have been a fluke of the time I actually got online. At college in 91-95, I had access to some interesting stuff in the computer lab. After a bit of fumbling I figured out how to use the Linx browser while logged into a VAX machine from the lab's network (thinnet-connected 80286 PCs, but that was all it took). I guess the sysops I was getting information from were just as "gee whiz'ed" about the Internet as I was.

Threadjack:
I hear ya, I just don't remember people pinpointing datacenters like that save for maybe the Uni environment. On a sidenote, my condolences for you being subjected to VMS/Vax as well. I hated those things, but they made the transition to Unix more welcome.

Saddam H. · Dec 23, 2003, 09:56 AM

Originally posted by rampguy:
Why the attitude?

I'm just trying to find out where IP addresses (of site visits) are located, in as precise detail as possible.

-Alex

Helping you correlate IP addies with geo-specific info is not something lightly done. You're asking for our help, and I doubt any of us want to help you use it for email spam purposes.

Not liking the potential insideous explotation of others is where my 'attitude' comes from. I asked a simple, legit question, and it is you who has caught an 'attitude'.

ghporter · Dec 23, 2003, 10:47 AM

Originally posted by Saddam H.:
Helping you correlate IP addies with geo-specific info is not something lightly done. You're asking for our help, and I doubt any of us want to help you use it for email spam purposes.

Not liking the potential insideous explotation of others is where my 'attitude' comes from. I asked a simple, legit question, and it is you who has caught an 'attitude'.

I have to piggy back on this: spending $500 on a database because of "curiosity" sounds like you have way too much money on your hands. I'm sure I can find several other people on this forum alone who can help you find other productive ways to spend that kind of money.

If you're trying to collect locations of the servers you've surfed, sort of like the contact cards that amateur radio operators exchange, that's quite different from gathering geographic data on servers in order to target unsolicited traffic. We're all victims of spammers, even if we, individually, don't receive a single piece of onsolicited email-the entire Internet is slower for everyone because of the volume of crap going out.

I get repeated offers to fix my credit (it's fine, thanks), enhance my breasts (sorry, not standard equipment on this model), improve my 'performance' (absolutely no problem there!), purchase prescription drugs online (wait a minute...!), get a degree-acredited and not (got mine the hard way), and go into business for a minimum investment (probably by printing signs and sending out spam). In a given day I get this kind of junk on four different email accounts (each with a different purpose). I spend more time clearing out junk than I do reading. Ok, venting aside, you've got to understand that the entire Internet-using community has a great stake in eliminating spam, and in stopping new and different ways for spammers to attack. Nothing personal, but if it looks like a possible attack, people are going to react negatively.

fabz · Dec 27, 2003, 05:55 PM

I am hosting a couple of friend sites at Liverack.com and the offer a tool similar to what you are looking for... It oviouly is not the best but it comes included w/the package

dataxy.com