

IP Address Geolocation database - jrnkntl
http://blogama.org/node/58

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binarray2000
Folks... he gives us the database for FREE! We can use it or leave it. I would
hope that someone downloads the damn thing, compares it against his GeoIP and
tells us his findings. Otherwise, the discussion about accuracy is silly.

~~~
tc
_I was trying to find a free SQL database of IP geolocation with country,
city, region, latitude and longitude for a project but none was accurate and
up to date so I decided to create my own and now I offer it for free._

He makes it sound as though this isn't particularly difficult or expensive.
Does anyone want to speculate on the method he is using to compile this data?
For his zipcode database he seems to be running mass queries on the Google
Maps API.

Simply doing mass WHOIS queries to the regional registrars only gets you data
about the corporate headquarters of the ISPs, which I suppose could be enough
depending on the level of granularity that is acceptable to you.

(presently a similar question on his forum, posted by someone else, is
unanswered: <http://blogama.org/node/105>)

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Locke
Someone on reddit claims it's an exact copy of this:

<http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity>

I haven't verified that claim.

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rmaccloy
From page (quoted in some other comment below): "Very accurate. The database
is updated during the first week of each month."

This is also the frequency at which Maxmind releases updates. So...

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mpk
.. so perhaps he's pulling the data from some of the same sources as Maxmind
does and hence is on a similar update schedule, is what you're implying,
right?

Anyway, I'd still like to know what those sources are.

~~~
gjm11
Or perhaps the implication is that he's pulling some of his data from the
Maxmind database. (Which would be illegal, unless I'm misremembering Maxmind's
licensing terms.)

I'm guessing that you're merely pretending not to understand what's being
implied, but I don't understand why...

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chime
Here's one I made (and maintain) that doesn't need a database:
<http://chir.ag/projects/geoiploc/> but it only does Country name, not
city/region.

My file is updated once a day and is basically one giant PHP array. It works
quite well for parsing through logs and I've used it on many of my hi-demand
sites with some caching.

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Sam_Odio
This seems very interesting. I definitely think there's a need for competition
to MaxMind's free geoip database. I registered openipdb.(org|com) a year ago
with the intention of doing that but never got around to it.

Is anyone interested in taking this data and turning it into a legit open
source project? Let me know and I'll donate the domain name :)

You'd have to contact the author and make sure the data has an open license,
but my guess is that he's OK with it.

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axod
>> Q). "how accurate is the data? A). Very accurate. The database is updated
during the first week of each month."

Be nice to have a better idea of why this is more accurate than say MaxMind
GeoIP, how much more accurate it is, where the data comes from etc.

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swombat
Agreed... GeoIP works great for us so far, and is free. Is there any good
reason to change?

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brl
The free GeoIP databases are deliberately crippled with inaccuracies. Their
business model is to sell you an upgrade to the good information.

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axod
I've been using it for about 9 years. If all you need is country resolution,
it seems pretty much spot on, and very useful.

I haven't seen anything that is all that accurate beyond that. Most geo
location (for the UK anyway), pegs people at the ISPs head quarters, rather
than their actual location. Which isn't really very useful.

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streety
I'm all for competition in this space but I'm left with some questions.

"How accurate is the data? Very accurate. The database is updated during the
first week of each month."

To me this is not acceptable. Firstly, I want numbers and not a vague
assurance. Secondly, I'm dubious whether a brand new service in this space is
going to be, what I would consider to be, very accurate.

This isn't to say that the service is without merit just that I want a little
more info and a little less marketing hyperbole.

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streety
I've just found this forum post: <http://blogama.org/node/87>

The claim is 99.5% accuracy. Whether that is reproducible and whether it holds
outside the US is unknown.

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jasonkester
This is gold.

I spent a lot of time a few years back looking for something like this, and
the existing solutions were just terrible. Like the author says, there just
wasn't a usable dataset out there. Mostly there were a bunch of bad web APIs
wanting to charge money for wildly inaccurate data.

So yeah, this might still be inaccurate, but it's a huge step forward.

Thanks!

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naj
My openHosting account in Virginia returns (for xml) the lat/long
(35.685,139.751) of the Japanese Imperial Palace. Not sure what that means.

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savrajsingh
I use maxmind.com's javascript API. It works great, is easy and free, and is
up to date.

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jmtame
Any databases exist for reverse geocoding? (start with long,lat and finds
city, state?)

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tectonic
Check out <http://www.geonames.org/>

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maurycy
We will see. The competition is (nearly) always good.

