Accurate, open source IP-based localisation

Part One!

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Being able to reliably identify the physical location of an IP address is an important element for a lot of online activities. From ecommerce stores needing to calculate the correct sales taxes (or import regulations) to detecting fake social media accounts, knowing where visitors to your website are coming from is all vital information.

Whatever your reasons, you’re left with two questions: how do you find out this information from an IP address; and can you trust the accuracy of the source? Most GeoIP (the industry jargon) services are slow at updating their databases, and are incredibly secretive about how they get their information.

While some providers (like Maxmind) enable you to download a version of its database periodically, this tends to be its least accurate data and is rarely updated. Its goal is to push users to its API products that it claims to be significantly more accurate than its free offering. While the competition in this space is improving, and the prices of such services are coming down, an ongoing independent study out of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has shown that these commercial databases are up to 63 per cent incorrect. GeoIP.Network takes a different approach to IP localisation. It’s 100 per cent open source,