Sophisticated or not, IP geo location technologies give web operators the possibility to discover the location of abusive users around the Globe and apply national or international laws on them. The virtual world of the Internet offers freedom to the users more than the offline world. The reason why so many laws are broken with the help of the Internet is that people get caught less online. Authenticity, fraud, copyrights and so many more couldn't be as easily detected in a network as in the real world until recently and the perpetrator often got away with the crime. IP geo location saved the day and will probably save it even more in the future. This technological mean of location is becoming very useful and demanded because of security, access and network efficiency. To transform the borderless Internet environment to a place where laws do apply just in the same manner as in the geographical territory IP geo location is an imperative. Let's take the example of a web site that has an increasing number of visitors. This site deals with a lot of clients that use their services. There is no guarantee for the safety of any transactions unless the clients offer their information online. What if this info would be false? The location can be obtained if the client voluntarily gives the IP address away (with the help of a site registration) or, if he does not, then it can be detected with approximate accuracy through different methods. An online form, registration, sign-up - all can be tricked with false information. There is no other mean of verification of authenticity and legal constraint than IP geo location. Software solutions help web operators find out the IP geo location of a person through a number of methods: 1. The simplest one is the less effective also. Looking up the Regional International Registry for "Whois" records can prove to be a useless struggle. There are 5 R.I.R.s and each serves a designated area in the world. The R.I.R.s allocate IP addresses to organizations, ISP's and users in their specific region or area and they allow the free download of the files with the information. Records with IP addresses have actually been downloaded by various persons who now offer them for free in online databases you have to access. However these IP geo location files are not very accurate and might not help. 2. Basic network tools like ping, traceroute and nslookup are more effective in IP geo location. A network of servers can prove to offer a more accurate IP address location. IP addresses all over the Internet are "probed" and used by the network to find the exact location of just one IP address. Some solution providers use a lot of servers (thousands) while others use only 10-12. Ping = Packet Internetwork Groper (It is a tool also received with the TCP/IP software package and it determines if a host is active or not determining the round-trip delay) Traceroute = used as a debugging tool to determine the route from a local to a remote host Nslookup = name server look up program (The TCP/IP software package includes this program in order to determine a host name or an IP address) 3. While this last category of IP geo location methods (number 2) is considered of medium effectiveness, there are other solutions who use even more sophisticated technology such as artificial intelligence and special systems. Some also make a more thorough verification and comparisons of IP addresses and IP geo locations for a perfect result. There are many things to say about this rather complicated topic that requires knowledge about the ever-changing Internet environment. The guideline is that IP geo location is earning more popularity everyday just like any aspect regarding the full expansion market, the Internet. Safety is an issue in the virtual world just as much as in the real one because the two interact. IP geo location takes care of this by acknowledging true identities. |
