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Posted by Rik on 08/16/07 22:27
On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:02:59 +0200, NC <nc@iname.com> wrote:
>> I also see a bunch of commercial services that offer a "country
>> whois" function for a subscription fee. You'd think this sort of
>> capability would be standardized by now.
>
> It is. Matching IP addresses with locations is done based on WHOIS
> information.
They might use them, however, mathing IP-adresses to country (state, city)
is not entirely done by WHOIS information. It is often a fallback if
nothing else is known/certain. A lot of the more reliable sources
continuously hold massive 'surveys' (do you live here? if not, please tell
us where you do...), and get information from third parties where an
IP-address and geolocation are given (some ISP's and larger online stores
for example, allthough they would have to have a very precise privacy
statement IMHO). Millions of datasets get processed to extrapolate some
probable range of ip's for a location, in which case the whois information
comes in handy for determening which ISP's hold certain ranges. That's
more of a 'boundary'-determining of a range then the actual 'value' of a
range. AOL is certainly hard to pin down due to their proxy network.
It's all quite a lot of work, and terribly expensive.
And on a sidenote in this thread a warning to all trying to use
geolocation to determine language: don't, use the language-accept headers.
Geolocation might be usefull to provide 'local' information or to
determine the general location of (groups of) clients.
--
Rik Wasmus
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