New netblock Geolocate wrong (Google)

Tue Jan 19 12:13:08 UTC 2010

>> Something that I have often wondered is how folks would feel about
>> publishing some sort of geo information in reverse DNS (something like
>> LOC records, with whatever precision you like) -- this would allow the
>> folks that geo stuff to automagically provide the best answer, and
>> because you control the record, you can specify whatever resolution /
>> precision you like.
>
> yes!

FWIW, there has been some work in the IETF on creating protocols to
allow pretty rich location information to be published in reverse DNS.
 Basically, you publish a NAPTR pointer to a location server [1] where
an interested client can ask for the location of a specific IP address
[2][3].  (Publishing location in this way is a requirement in several
systems for VoIP 9-1-1 around the world to allow first responders to
ask networks for location.  See for example the NENA i3 architecture
in the US and a similar "Canadian i2" for Canada.)

The location representation these protocols use is a profile of the
Geospatial Markup Language, so you can represent anything from a
simple point to full GIS-like layers; you can also represent civic
addresses (i.e., postal addresses) directly.

If people are interested, let me know and I can provide pointers to
some useful open-source software.

--Richard

[1] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-lis-discovery>
[2] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-http-location-delivery>
[3] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-held-identity-extensions>
[4] <http://www.nena.org/standards/technical/voip/i3-requirements>