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The Internet

Latitude/Longitude of IPs 48

Posted by CmdrTaco from the fun-to-play-with dept.
FigWig sent us something goofy to play with if you need some data to help aim the ICBMs you have leftover in your basement from the last major holiday. This site allows you to get the latitude/longitude of any IP address.
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Latitude/Longitude of IPs More

Latitude/Longitude of IPs

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  • Maybe those lawyers could even resist CmdrTaco from mentioning sites on slashdot, as it might be interpreted as a "call for DoS-attack" :-)

  • sigh (Score:1)

    by bmetz ( 523 )
    this thing is _ancient_, I'm surprised to see it
    on slashdot suddenly.
  • Posted by HolyMackeralAndy:

    /. or maybe we should call it 'smash dot'.

  • Ditto (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by Zyca:

    You don't do that, you simply open the weapon bay and start firing that Avanger 30mm gattling cannon with Depeleted Uranium shells... :)

    No need to wait for the network admin to recover the site from "smash dot" effect... :)
  • I remember getting harassing emails (with physical threats) from a guy a couple years ago. He was using HotMail (one of the free, anonymous emails) to send letters to me about what he was going to do. I couldn't figure out who could actually be a that angry with me, so my only clue was to track him through the net.

    Well, with some investigation, and the help of a few other System Administrators, I got his exact location, and narrowed down the suspects to a single computer lab, which told let me figure out who it was (one of the ex-boyfriends of a girl I was dating frequented that computer lab, and he was a nut).

    But, during this process, I the tricks I used to track him were some of these IP to Longitude and Lattitude things, and found them wildly inaccurate. It gave me his position as a networking center, and he was actually on the oppisite end of the state. The networking center held the ownership for this IP block, and therefore was the position of the IP address that was returned. But infact, this center was NOT his location, because the internal network was elabraote enough that he was actually in a related facility on the other end of the state that I tracked him to.

    It wasn't the IP to Longitude and Lattitude thing that helped, it was more network tools, routing information, and mostly good System Administrators willing to help that did the job.

    BTW, for what it's worth, HotMail was no help what-so-ever either. They canceled his account, and he quickly just got another through them, and kept sending stuff.

  • i'm sure there are legal problems with doing that.

    evil lawyers.
  • You can't expect those to be absolutely perfect. Theoretically you could trace my IP right down to the side of the bedroom in the on-campus apartment I'm in right now, but just try tracing someone in Australia with one of these things; the best that site will give you is the country (it'll list Canberra as the city, no matter what city the computer is actually in).

    These things are tools, but they can't be expected to be particularly reliable, especially outside of the US. If I'm not mistaken, though, that's NSI's fault, not the program's, so there isn't much that can be done.

  • BAH (Score:1)

    by KrON ( 2656 )
    Adra is that you?

  • Let's say that /. doesn't do the mirroring, but instead /. allows me (and anyone else) to easily post a URL where we've mirrored a site. Something like "I've mirrored site X -- It'll be mirrored until ". Then anyone who wants to take on the legal responisbility for themselves could act as a mirror. /. would only provide the links.

    This can be done manually right now, but what if it were built into the software. Would /. be liable for anything?
  • I think I suggested this to them a month ago or so, and said suggestion was promptly ignored.

    Or maybe I am just imagining that I suggested it to them.
  • Just set up a Squid server to act like The Anonymizer does. Call it http://effect.slashdot.org/ or something. Have a bunch of people volunteer to run this Squid setup, and use round-robin DNS to have effect.slashdot.org point to all of them. Then have the external links in Slashdot stories point to http://effect.slashdot.org/http://tiny.wimpy.site/ instead of directly to http://tiny.wimpy.site/.

  • Guess I'm safe from ICBM's!


    :-)


  • People getting sued for stuff like that is one problem.

    People not doing stuff like that for fear of being sued is another, and much larger problem.

    I wonder what would happen if a large group of people just stood up and said no. "No, I will not put a disclaimer in my sources", "No, I will not hesitate to do them a favour by mirroring their site", "No, I won't live in constant fear of legal action!"

    Yes, I am naïve.
    --

  • Well - try this against
    anyting in net 44! These are
    amateur radio packet stations,
    which might be VERY mobile.

    So that is 1/256 of the net
    where the concept is bogus.

    And anyone that is behind a
    corporate firewall is another
    place where the IP addresses
    have no bearing to location.

    Not a practical idea in most
    cases.

  • I haven't been to it yet [/. remember? :-)] but im assuming that it uses a cgi app of some sort to obtain the information. If this is true then without the author giving you the associated information a mirror would not do anything. You would need the author to give you the cgi and (im assuming) some sort of database.
    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff

  • Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by dwd ( 5745 )
    RIPE - http://www.ripe.net/ - contains all European (And others, sometimes) IP addresses, and shuold have a postal address associated with them. This should mean that you can trace any IP address down to a pretty fine location, assuming it's entered properly in RIPE, of course.

    As for RFCs or drafts regarding IP location, I can't immediately find one... Although there is/was going to be a world wide database of IP/AS details, much along the lines of what RIPE can do. Can't get through to the IETF site to find the details, though.

  • Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by dwd ( 5745 )
    Ah... I see. Domain location, rather than IP location. Thanks.

    Which gives me another thought... Should Slashdot provide a RFC database? With Rob's coding skills, we could end up with a very valuable resource here.

  • Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by dwd ( 5745 )
    True... My own IP address comes out as being in London's West End, a place I could only wish to live.

    The problem is usually that dialup IP pools and the like aren't easily reconcilable with RIPE's level of accuracy. Nor would anyone particularly like to have their home address easily available to everyone...
  • I would love to put up a database of RFCs, but I just don't know where to find them all... Could somebody help me out with that? I'll post a link to the database as soon as it's completed.
    --
  • Even 127.0.0.1? Or 10.x.x.x? Or 192.168.x.x? Or whatever that other range of free for internal use addresses is? :-)

  • BAH (Score:1)

    by adraken ( 8869 )
    already slashdotted... eeeergh..

  • BAH (Score:1)

    by adraken ( 8869 )
    you bet it is
  • cello will be gone for a couple of days anyway... heh... damnit, people get off it, i want to try.. :P
  • Unless you look for some stupid AOLer, you will get at best coordinates of my proxy server. There are miriads of those, allowing external access. And not all of them use CGI variable to show originating IP.

    AtW,
    http://www.investigatio.com [investigatio.com]
  • Are you certain you mean "I'm sure" and not "I think"?

    Google is doing just fine caching everything, as are all the ISPs who use Squid proxies.

    And, for that matter, companies such as the one I work for who use Squid proxies internally.

  • IPv6 (Score:1)

    by Drakino ( 10965 )
    If I remember right, IPv6 will be able to be traced back to location like this, but without the extensive tables of information either on IP or DNS info.
  • Hasn't this information been around in the form of LOC records for quite a while?
  • Location via internic.net lookups? Somewhat simplistic a solution, no?

    sighhh... it'd be nice if programs like xtraceroute [chalmers.se] could work without having to use massive IP location tables. For some reason I can't help but feel like a James Bond villian when I see my network hops neatly displayed on a map of the earth }:-)

    I hear there's an RFC in the works that will help with this (or is it part of IPv6?)
  • > As for RFCs or drafts regarding IP location, I can't immediately find one...

    RFC 1876, the LOC resource record.
  • Well, then you use a GPS and send the updates to the DNS server to update the server... ;-P
  • Excellent suggestion! Rob, other /. admins reading this? Anybody want to volunteer to incorporate this into the slashdot codebase? points to self: "Not it!" (I would but I have a busy course load this quarter.
  • Next on Rob's list of things to do should be automatic mirroring of sites linked from Slashdot...
  • Nothing is safe from the wrath of Taco's Fun Link Club!

    If thats the same site I'm thinking of, I used to play with it constantly... though it's not really any more informative than going to the place's web site and clicking on "Contact".

    So back to aiming ICBMs, who can tell me how to get the L/L of my favorite cell phone user ... like, the guy in the car in front of me?

    Regards,

  • This happy little cgi existed for years and was even fairly well known (i thought). Chances are
    it's been sitting there without the admins even remembering it was there.

    Will we ever see it again?

    Regards,

  • I think I have your site bookmarked. Isn't it "http://localhost"?
  • RIPE has pretty much all of the RFC's in text format, as far as I can see, at ftp.ripe.net/rfc/. The file rfc-retrieval.txt contains a list of mirrors which probably are closer to you.
  • I'd be more usefull to find out in what country or even city that IP is located
  • I'd really be impressed if they could give you the lat/lon of CDPD devices. It would make my job a heck of a lot easier.

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