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Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

ipdata.co

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Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#41

Post by CaveTech »

jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #30
mywittyname wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can download the Maxmind database locally. I don't see the option for that from IpData. That's worth the price increase for me. Having a web API is great for low- or mid-volume applications, but adding 10ms per user for an HTTPS call would still be like 1000x slower than hitting a local DB.

You're right, they're definitely many cases where incorporating any calls to external resources would be the wrong call and where hitting a local copy of a db would be the best solution. An API such as this exists would be a great choice where you need to modify content on the frontend. In which case you'd benefit from the availability of 10 endpoints around the world from which the API is available to provide the lo…

If this was really a concern your own application would already be geolocated and thus you'd get this effect for free with a local version.

Having a geolocated IP API, while still serving and responding to requests from a single region is just lipstick on a pig.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#42

Post by jonathan-kosgei »

kasbah wrote: post #38

I host my own instance of https://freegeoip.net . Any advantages this would have over that?

Hi Kasbah, :) Several.

- The Global infrastructure backing ipdata.co is pretty impressive, 4 data centers in the US, 1 in Canada, 2 in Europe and 1 each in Mumbai, Sydney and Seoul.

- We offer more datapoints, I tried to build this around the most common use cases for Geolocation, one of which is showing your users the right currency. This is something we provide, that is, the currency ISO code and symbol.

- I think our API is pretty darn fast :)

Your pros;

You offer more data formats, csv and xml whereas we only offer JSON.

You offer a pretty high free tier but I think there's definitely tonnes of people who derive a lot of value from ipdata :)

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#44

Post by jonathan-kosgei »

harrisonhjones wrote: post #39

It would be cool if your examples (or really your entire website) was a git repo so people could easily report issues. Examples: 1. Your GO examples don't quite follow Go standard style "resp_body" instead of just "body", "resp", or "respBody" 2. Instead of "Error Codes" it should probably be "Status Codes" since the first "Error Code" is actually "200 OK"

On 2, thanks for catching that, changing that right now. On 1 atm we have a Python repo https://github.com/ipdata/python which I know isn't exactly what you're looking for. Thanks for reporting this. The right avenue to handle something like this would be sending an email to Support. Be assured we'll be quick to respond and work through whatever you need.

Made the change.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#45

Post by chatmasta »

mywittyname wrote: post #19
no_protocol wrote: post #9

I wonder if you can change the pricing plans and language around them a little. What happens if I'm going along happily on the 2500/day plan and suddenly I get hit with a traffic spike and need 20,000/day for 3 days until things calm down? If you're going to use pricing buckets like this it probably needs to also come with an automated way to bump the plan if needed. Someone else in the thread suggested Maxmind as an…

You can download the Maxmind database locally. I don't see the option for that from IpData. That's worth the price increase for me. Having a web API is great for low- or mid-volume applications, but adding 10ms per user for an HTTPS call would still be like 1000x slower than hitting a local DB.

Just cache the responses so that only the first time a new IP connects it needs to be looked up (until cache fills)

Integrating maxmind is a bit of a pain and it’s a massive database. Not well suited to use cases like single purpose or ephemeral containers.

You’ll probably end up storing the maxmind db in a separate node on your local network, anyway. So you still have a latency issue (although lower, obviously). More importantly you now need to maintain an extra box per replicated cluster. It could make sense to outsource that management if the latency between your data center and ipdata is acceptable. Such low latency is easily achievable if ipdata has BGP anycast on servers in the same cloud region as your app.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#46

Post by jonathan-kosgei »

CaveTech wrote: post #41
jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, they're definitely many cases where incorporating any calls to external resources would be the wrong call and where hitting a local copy of a db would be the best solution. An API such as this exists would be a great choice where you need to modify content on the frontend. In which case you'd benefit from the availability of 10 endpoints around the world from which the API is available to provide the lo…

If this was really a concern your own application would already be geolocated and thus you'd get this effect for free with a local version. Having a geolocated IP API, while still serving and responding to requests from a single region is just lipstick on a pig.

I get what you mean. However from the use cases I've seen often whatever processing needs to be done eg. showing a banner ad to users from a particular state or redirecting to a country specific version of a site can be handled from the user's browser.

Even if you're not hosting the country specific site in that region your user will still save time on making the call to our endpoint local to them.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#48

Post by kasbah »

jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #42
kasbah wrote: post #38

I host my own instance of https://freegeoip.net . Any advantages this would have over that?

Hi Kasbah, :) Several. - The Global infrastructure backing ipdata.co is pretty impressive, 4 data centers in the US, 1 in Canada, 2 in Europe and 1 each in Mumbai, Sydney and Seoul. - We offer more datapoints, I tried to build this around the most common use cases for Geolocation, one of which is showing your users the right currency. This is something we provide, that is, the currency ISO code and symbol. - I think…

Thanks for you answer. To clarify: Freegeopip is not my project but it's pretty easy (for someone who knows how to run a Linux server) to host your own instance.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#50

Post by jonathan-kosgei »

kasbah wrote: post #48
jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Kasbah, :) Several. - The Global infrastructure backing ipdata.co is pretty impressive, 4 data centers in the US, 1 in Canada, 2 in Europe and 1 each in Mumbai, Sydney and Seoul. - We offer more datapoints, I tried to build this around the most common use cases for Geolocation, one of which is showing your users the right currency. This is something we provide, that is, the currency ISO code and symbol. - I think…

Thanks for you answer. To clarify: Freegeopip is not my project but it's pretty easy (for someone who knows how to run a Linux server) to host your own instance.

My bad! Sorry about that. That's definitely an option, however there're definitely users who'd rather not do it themselves and would benefit from our global infrastructure and not having to bother with updates.
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