Firewall Wizards mailing list archives

Re: Geography of an IP Address


From: Joseph S D Yao <jsdy () cospo osis gov>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 16:22:43 -0400 (EDT)

Alex Noordergraaf chimed in with:
board operator wrote:
I was wondering if there's any way to trace the geography (actual city or
state, province etc.) of a person's static IP address. I know that most
have dynamic (changing) IP's but if I were to somehow obtain their static
IP, could I then begin an amateur trace to their physical location?

Try:
      http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2ll
-Alex

Which only reports the address of the administrative office, as
reported to WHOIS at the time UIUC was doing this research project -
which may or may not have anything to do with the physical location of
the device having the IP address.  But it's probably as close a
starting point as you're going to get.

Remember that physical proximity and network connectivity have
absolutely nothing to do with each other.  Two interfaces on the same
physical box may have infinite network distance from each other.  Also,
many real IP addresses have an indeterminate location.  [Which ones?
That should be easy to figure out.  ;-)]

--
Joe Yao                         jsdy () cospo osis gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
COSPO/OSIS Computer Support                                     EMT-B
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