Re: Identifying location by host IP number

David,

While I don't know of any IP indexes that would cover what you are looking
for, keep in mind that users of AOL, regardless of where they are, will
appear to be visiting from Richmond, Virginia (I know this is fact for
US/Canada, and suspect it for other countires as well). With an estimated
15-20 million users on AOL, if your site presumes to guess their location
based on their IP, you may well present incorrect pages to some people who
use AOL from England for example (again, if AOL users in England still "exit
to the Internet" from AOL's HQ in Richmond).

Just something to keep in mind...

Kehvan

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Sharp" <David.Sharp(at)sharp-words.com>
To: <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 12:29 AM
Subject: Re: Identifying location by host IP number


At 15:42 +0300 25/06/00, Lauri V"in wrote:
>
>You could also use TraceRoute to see which computers are between you and
the
>target to see where the target is from. People are usually connected to ISP
>near them so you can find out where they are quite precisely.
>
etc.

What I'm looking for is not a way to trace individual users after the
event - but a mechanism that will map IP numbers to a regional table
on the fly, and route users to a different page depending on their
presumed geographical region.

For example, a user presumed to be located in North America would see
a different page to someone in Europe or Asia.

For this what is required is:

-- an environment variable that provides the true IP number of the
end-user (and not that of a proxy, which may be situated in a totally
different part of the world to the user)

-- a table which maps blocks of IP numbers to world regions and/or
countries.

Is this possible, and if so, where can I find the required resources?

[I realise that the answer to my question may be somewhere in the
vast documentation of the www.arin.net or www.icann.org sites, but I
was hoping that someone on this list would have a quick answer]

Thanks for any help.



--
--
David Sharp, journaliste, France http://www.sharp-words.com/
Tel (home) 331 42 64 35 94  - (office) 331 40 41 47 92
  E-mail <david.sharp(at)sharp-words.com> ICQ: 16881741

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