LACNIC To Launch IP Geolocation Initiative

30/08/2018

LACNIC’s Technology Department has been working on the development of a beta version of a geolocation application for IP addresses allocated by LACNIC to organizations and companies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Developed by LACNIC engineers, the project was inspired by an idea discussed by the IETF: publishing IP geolocation information in a standardized format.

Geolocation is the process that links the IP address that a computer uses to connect to the Internet with its real-world geographic location.

To develop the GeoFeeds platform, the LACNIC team worked based on “Self-published IP Geolocation Data” [ID: Self Published Geofeeds], which Google engineers presented to the IETF in 2013 and basically allows operators to publish information about where an IP address is located. “We are offering our community the chance to test a beta service that will allow them to generate and publish information on the location of the IP address blocks they are using,” said LACNIC CTO Carlos Martínez.

An organization can access the system created by LACNIC (available at https://geofeeds.lacnic.net/) and voluntarily generate information on the geographic location of their IP addresses.

In addition, the geofeed information generated by the system is available for download at https://geofeeds.lacnic.net/geo/geoFeeds.csv

LACNIC member companies or organizations willing to contribute can enter information on where the IP addresses they have been allocated by the regional registry are being used (city, country, post code).

These files will then be used openly by the community when querying the location of an IP address.

The information members enter will be experimentally shared to a geolocation portal operated by RIPE-NCC. When a query is received, various sources of IP location information are analyzed, and a weighted score is calculated estimating the location (country, city, etc.) where the IP address is being used.

“RIPE-NCC will take the geofeeds created by organizations in the LACNIC region as an additional element when calculating this weighted score. Our tool will contribute information to the RIPE-NCC system and will appear as one of the items used to calculate the score,” added Martínez.

Today, the geographic information listed by LACNIC includes the country where the organization receiving the resources is legally domiciled, which is often not the location where the IP address is being used.

Although Martínez explained that Regional Internet Registries – among them LACNIC – do not offer any guarantees regarding geolocation information, they should promote discussion among the community and provide tools to address the difficulties related to the use of IP addresses.

LACNIC’s IP geolocation project is available at https://geofeeds.lacnic.net/ and will be presented during the LACNIC 30 event to be held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, on 24-28 September 2018.