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IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

sanjayparekh.com

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Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#41

Post by onionisafruit »

sanjayparekh wrote: post #30
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can accept that he invented it in the same sense that I invented recursion. I called it the "ouroboros" function and was really quite pleased with myself for thinking of the pattern. Now, the fact that I called it by an ancient reference should probably have been the first clue that I didn't get there first, and sure enough later I found out that actually no, it's a very old idea in computer programming. For the re…

All I can say is when I first met Vint Cerf, he was pretty enthusiastic about the invention. But maybe he didn't really understand the Internet either. You can see the fireside chat I had with him here (to be clear, we weren't sitting next to a fire either): https://vimeo.com/124048978

It takes some self confidence to share a video where Vint Cerf calls you a nincompoop -- even if jokingly. Thanks for sharing it anyway. I enjoyed watching.

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#42

Post by unethical_ban »

And what a privacy nightmare, particularly with IPv6. When I see a map of my home IPv4, it's within a mile or two. With IPv6, it's on my block.

But at least the companies I consult can block Chinese IP addresses from their public web presence. Chinese security will never think to stand up a server in the US or Europe.

(Yes, I know it can help block noisy log generation).

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#43

Post by Larrikin »

kristopolous wrote: post #22
yosito wrote: post #18

25 years old and still constantly misused by tech companies to assume my language preferences while traveling even though my browser explicitly communicates my language and locale preferences. Spotify and Google are particularly notorious offenders.

Wrote about that 7 years ago over here https://kristopolous.medium.com/stop-guessing-languages-base...

I usually mentally filter any links that I see that are on medium, and actively block them from search results.

Old articles like yours can be read to the end, but with a banner blocking a third of the page, and nearly 100% of new articles I've come across in the past year get a nice paywall right at the entire reason I clicked on the article. All the new articles that aren't blocked are worthless content I wish I hadn't clicked on.

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#44

Post by sanjayparekh »

onionisafruit wrote: post #41
sanjayparekh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I can say is when I first met Vint Cerf, he was pretty enthusiastic about the invention. But maybe he didn't really understand the Internet either. You can see the fireside chat I had with him here (to be clear, we weren't sitting next to a fire either): https://vimeo.com/124048978

It takes some self confidence to share a video where Vint Cerf calls you a nincompoop -- even if jokingly. Thanks for sharing it anyway. I enjoyed watching.

I took one for the team so that no one else had to ask that question. And I'll take Vint calling me a nincompoop any day. Especially when you know how nice of a guy he really is. :-)

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#45

Post by sanjayparekh »

unethical_ban wrote: post #42

And what a privacy nightmare, particularly with IPv6. When I see a map of my home IPv4, it's within a mile or two. With IPv6, it's on my block. But at least the companies I consult can block Chinese IP addresses from their public web presence. Chinese security will never think to stand up a server in the US or Europe. (Yes, I know it can help block noisy log generation).

If you're getting targeted to your block with IPv6, your ISP is likely giving away your data. VPNs are your friend.

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#46

Post by 8organicbits »

> The site owners contended that they could not know where an Internet user was geographically located. Clearly, I had proven the opposite.

I've spent a lot of time working with the Maxmind and other paid datasets for IP geolocation. One thing you'll quickly notice is that they disagree with each other, sometimes giving answers on different continents.

There's challenges here. IP addresses are dynamically assigned. They are bought and sold to different companies regularly.

That's not even getting into problems like VPNs, or remote browser sessions. The details and context are lacking here, but I disagree that you can be certain where a user is located using those tools and its harmful to believe you can.

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#48

Post by kristopolous »

Larrikin wrote: post #43
kristopolous wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrote about that 7 years ago over here https://kristopolous.medium.com/stop-guessing-languages-base...

I usually mentally filter any links that I see that are on medium, and actively block them from search results. Old articles like yours can be read to the end, but with a banner blocking a third of the page, and nearly 100% of new articles I've come across in the past year get a nice paywall right at the entire reason I clicked on the article. All the new articles that aren't blocked are worthless content I wish I ha…

I should probably just self host all my stuff and stop assuming decent platforms are going to continue being reasonable because they always seem to break themselves

Re: IP Geolocation Is Twenty-Five Years Old

#50

Post by silisili »

sanjayparekh wrote: post #28
ggm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I worked out how to monetize it" is very different to "I invented it"

To clarify, yes whois registries have existed since the start of the Internet. However the location provided by those registries does not equate to the users' location. For example, back in the day, IBM (IIRC) ran a worldwide network of dial-ins and all of their IPs were registered back to their headquarters in Schenectady, NY. So yes, we figured out how to monetize it and maybe in the extreme "invented" is a stretch…

I think this is a much better tagline, personally. It paints a picture of how it went above and beyond what was there already.
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