Funny this should come up... I've found that a local Mobile Broadband outfit here in NZ are using an IP range that Akamai's Geolocation service thinks is actually in New Jersey. Causes me some oddness as a result - this despite the fact that Maxmind has it correct. Whilst investigating this (just the day before yesterday) the following URL came to my attention - allows you to check the IP you're on against Akamai's Edgescape product: http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/products/personalization.html Their customer care team were responsive to an email I sent them (but were unwilling to make changes without the request coming through their customer... which in itself seems mad, their info is wrong - why don't they correct it?) Geolocation is clever, but seems to be very retrospective, and very much an imperfect science... there should be some obligation on people offering the service to work very hard to keep their data current, given the effect it can have on an end user. Mark. On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, Martin Hannigan wrote:

Maxmind www.maxmind.com is a fairly good indicator of what geo-locators are seeing, but I recall a recent thread here that there have been disagreements between the various geolocation services.

I think that some of it depends on the reference sources i.e. how many and what the algorithms are and also the update frequency. Using plain old whois data, for example, is notoriously unreliable, but definitely "usable" as a reference.

Might be nice if search engines and cdn's had a verification site for checking and suggesting corrections i.e. www.favoritesearchengine.com/ipverifiy

Best,

Martin

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Frank Bulk - iName.com <frnkblk@iname.com>wrote:

...

We were assigned a new block from ARIN two weeks ago and are getting several reports from end users that the Spanish and German versions of Google's search page are coming up.

IP2Location and Maxmind are mostly correct, but there appears to be no way for me to verify that Google and Akamai have 96.31.0.0/20 listed correctly.

Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction so I can make an authoritative check.

Thanks,

Frank

-- Martin Hannigan martin@theicelandguy.com p: +16178216079

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Neil <kngspook@gmail.com> wrote:

Or maybe they just shouldn't rely on it so much.

It annoys me at the hoops I have to jump through to change the language on Google-owned properties when they think I'm coming from Czechoslovakia or Malaysia or some such... Some, like Blogger, still don't do it right...

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...

http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/products/personalization.html

Like what? I have found that interacting with your favorite search engine is generally easy and interactive as long as you know where to look. I think that's really the problem at hand, the interaction and where you actually do it. Overall, geo location has turned out to be a somewhat valuable tool in terms of language, fraud, and localization. I think that it's important to continue to urge improvements in this technology, not divestment. NoSoObOp: Renesys ought to be playing in this space. :-) Best, Martin -- Martin Hannigan martin@theicelandguy.com p: +16178216079

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 6:44 AM, Chris Hills <chaz@chaz6.com> wrote:

On 03/01/09 07:31, Martin Hannigan wrote:

...

Overall, geo location has turned out to be a somewhat valuable tool in terms of language, fraud, and localization. I think that it's important to continue to urge improvements in this technology, not divestment.

Is it really that difficult to check the Accept-Language header for determining the language to use? This is particularly useful in countries that either have no official language, countries that have more than one official language, and tourists.

What's the accuracy rate? Combined, it is probably higher for that specific use case. I digress, ask your favorite search engine. Perhaps they'll explain. It is certainly interesting. [I think that] Over the last year we're seeing an uptick in geo-location problems addressed on NANOG because it's becoming profitable (whether through ads or fraud correlation through ip reputation) and it's probably not going away. Personally, I'd be happier with the publicly available checker. *shrug* YMMV and Best, -M< -- Martin Hannigan martin@theicelandguy.com p: +16178216079