Re: Localized Web Advertising & IP tracking (was Re: bilingual websites)

Tex,

You put your finger right on the problem. But there is more data lurking in 
various routing protocols that I think can be used to ping your location 
even if you dial in while on another continent.

Yes, you will have the same address. But a traceroute from a known location 
to your dial up (or vice versa) will be very different. for instance, the 
last hop would reflect the location of your dial up connection itself, not 
the location of Progress's IP addresses. If there were a table that had 
that device listed, and it's geo location, it would be a strong indicator 
that you are in the same location, or at least within the most reasonable 
phone rate selection.

OTOH, if you dialed directly to the US instead of locally, this might not 
work. But I suspect the vast vast majority of folks are connected at any 
time are connected through a known, or knowable, machine somewhere nearby 
(in the routing table sense).

The key is that it is not really the location of the owner of the ip 
address that matters (anyone can lie to the registry about that), but the 
location of the first or second hop that your packets travel to from your 
pc (or outside your lan) that matter in identifying your location.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago there was a routing problem at my isp, 
isolated to my local pop dialup point. I sent the traceroute to the 
engineers and (long crappy service story omitted here) the engineers were 
able to say "you are in Palo Alto?" based only on that. Of course, I am in 
Mountain View, but that is a darn site closer (next town over) than 
networldmap, which suggested Redding CA for me.

Best,

Barry

At 02:42 PM 10/30/2001 -0500, Tex Texin wrote:
>I dial into my company network from all over the world. No matter which
>contintent I am on, my IP address will look to have the same location.
>Interestingly, we are headquartered in Bedford, MA and networldmap
>thinks we are in Nashua NH.
>My guess is one of our Nashua employees added the info to networld map,
>either first or most recently, hence the determination that, that is
>where I am from.
>
>Also, I think to the outside world all of our employees seem to have the
>same IP address.
>tex
>
>David Gallardo wrote:
> >
> > IP addresses are assigned in a pretty consistent
> > manner with respect to geography. See:
> > http://www.networldmap.com
> >
> > @D
>
>--
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>Tex Texin                    Director, International Business
>mailto:Texin@Progress.com    Tel: +1-781-280-4271
>the Progress Company         Fax: +1-781-280-4655
>-------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Tuesday, 30 October 2001 14:58:22 UTC