IPv4 country of origin

Fri Oct 4 15:01:54 UTC 2002

Thus spake <alex at yuriev.com>
> > Say I have about 10 /16's reachable through firewalls in SJC, RDU, SYD, and
AMS.
> > No traceroutes or pings can make it past these firewalls, nor do the
hostnames
> > indicate any particular location.  How exactly do you plan on mapping these
to a
> > zip code, when I can tell you those addresses are fairly randomly spread, in
/24
> > increments, to sites all over the world?
>
> It is very easy. Anyone would care about it only when users from those
> addreses interact with whatever the software that ends up creating those
> databases. If those users never buy stuff from Amazon.com, Amazon.com does
> not care where they are. But eh moment they do, somewhere someone is
> cruniching the data that says "Of 10 sites that I saw this IP address access
> and provide a clearing for the credit card transaction, 9 ended up being
> within 3 miles radius of ZZZZ. Lets put a tag on that"

But Amazon already knows where I live, so why do they need an IP-to-address
database?  My physical location is irrelevant for load-balancing purposes --
topological location is what matters.  If they want to sell me "local" products,
they can do that by looking at the zip code on file for my shipping address.

> > The neat thing about selling databases like that is nobody can ever prove
how
> > incredibly inaccurate they are.  Just come up with a reasonable-sounding
> > collection methodology and claim any counterexamples are just flukes, then
> > collect money from the saps who believe you...
>
> The really neat things about talking to computer geeks is that they all
> operate with the lots of absolutes. They will explain to you why in a
> specific case it does not work and forget that those specific cases are
> usually exceptions.

That's because we've dealt with too many business types who hype how well the
general case works but ignore the exception cases that crash or corrupt your
systems.

> P.S. So, ever bought stuff from Amazon from one of those IP addresses and
> sent it to some non-related location *just* to confuse the mapping
> systems?

Not intentionally, but I work from a dozen different IPs, including ones from a
pool "located" in a different state that is shared by 30k VPN users worldwide.
I've also ordered stuff from IPs all over the world and shipped to various
locations inside the US.  I wonder where Amazon thinks I actually live, if they
care.

S