Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation
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Transcript of Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation
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8/14/2019 Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation
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A Digital ElementTM
White Pape
250 Scientic Drive Suite 800
Norcross, GA 30092
+1 678.258.6300 PHONE
www.digital-element.net
Removing Internet Anonymity Barriers
with IP Intelligence
When making a decision in the bricks and mortar world,geography plays a crucial role. For example, it affects the wayyou price and promote your products; it shapes the way youreach out to your target audiences; it is used to analyze theattributes of consumers within a particular area; and it placesrestrictions on the way you conduct business due to laws andregulations in a given area.
The same holds true in the online world. Understanding user location can be a critical
actor in customer outreach, yet until now there has been no reliable way to uncover
location inormation about online users.
Digital Elements patented NetAcuity IP Intelligence technology allows any type o
online business rom online advertisers to emerging technology companies to global
corporations to online retailers to identiy the location o online visitors down to a city-
level worldwide without invading user privacy. This technology, which is based on userIP addresses, can also uncover other valuable inormation about an online user such as
connection speed, ISP and domain name, providing a more accurate picture o online
traic in a non-invasive manner.
Digital Elements IP Intelligence is the de acto standard or accurate targeting and is used
across industries to enhance the value o online endeavors. Armed with new inormation
about the way in which individuals interact with the online channel, organizations rom
startups to the worlds most sophisticated Internet players now have to ability to create
more meaningul and impactul interactions with online users, ultimately increasing reach,
relevance and ROI.
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8/14/2019 Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation
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A Digital ElementTM
White Pape
250 Scientic Drive Suite 800
Norcross, GA 30092
+1 678.258.6300 PHONE
www.digital-element.net
Sample applications o IP Intelligenceinclude:
Targeted Online Advertising
Enables online advertisers and marketers to
geotarget to a city-level worldwide, increasing
advertisings reach, relevance and response. New
IP parameters allow or more pinpointed targeting
and exibility.
Content Localization
Provides online entities with the tools to move away
rom one-size-fts-all web content and instead
deliver relevant content, language, currency,
products and promotionscreating an instantconnection with website visitorsthat helps to
reduce website and transaction abandonment,
resulting in increased sales and revenue.
Geographic Rights Management
Allows online content distributors to adhere to
licensing and copyright agreements surrounding
usage o online audio and video content.
Additionally, IP Intelligence can be used to restrict
downloads in certain geographic locations or
encryption sotware or in other online uses where
content needs to be legally restricted.
Enhanced Analytics
Oers companies a new way to view, parse and
analyze online data to increase perormance
or online intitatives. It also provides a real-time
mechanism that allows customers to take
immediate action.
The First Generation o
IP Intelligence
When rst created, NetAcuity was reerred
to as geotargeting or geolocation
technology. Prior to this type o
technologyand unortunately still in use
todaydetermining user location revolved
around unreliable techniques that returnedquestionable data.
Online Registration Data
Websites typically ask users to ll out simple
orms in order to gather more inormation
about the user. This inormation is stored
in a cookie and placed on the users
machine, thus allowing the website that
collected the inormation to remember
the user and present tailored inormation.
The problem with inormation collected in
this manner is twoold: many users alsiy
their personal inormation, and more andmore users are turning o cookies on their
machines because they nd them to be
privacy-invasive.
Reverse Domain Name Server
(DNS) Lookup
Reverse DNS lookups are inaccurate
because most o the IP space has no
associated host name. Furthermore, i
there is a host name, the associated Top
Level Domains (TLDs) consist o a two or
three letter sux such as .com or .jp, which
were originally designed to provide a logicalassociation with the assigned sux. The
problem is that they are not very accurate,
and no longer consistently refect geography
when assigned. For example, the sux .md
began as a country designation, but has
been sold to companies worldwide because
o its appeal to those in the medical
proession. Furthermore, TLDs do not oer
location hints deeper than the country level.
And, in the case o generic TLDs like .com
and .net, geographic identiers are absent.
WHOIS/Registry DataWHOIS data ordinarily provides contact
inormation or each IP address range. But
in the case o many hundreds o thousandso IP addresses, the WHOIS data just
isnt accurate. Further compounding the
problem is that or large enterprises or
ISPs that have geographically dispersed
workers or customers, the inormation in the
WHOIS database refects the location o the
company headquarters, and not the actual
location o a given user, making reliability
o this data extremely poor. Example o a
Whois entry (over 64,000 IP addresses
registered to Earthlinks corporate
headquarters even though they actually may
be allocated to cities throughout the US andthe rest o the world):
EarthLink, Inc.
3100 New York Drive
Pasadena, CA 91107
US
Netname: EARTHLINK2000-B
Netblock: 165.247.0.0 - 165.247.255.255
Maintainer: ERMS
IP Intelligence Today
Unlike the techniques above, which rely on
individual user or corporate inormation,
Digital Elements IP Intelligence technology
utilizes a users or machines IP address to
determine location and other IP inormation.
IP addresses are network-supplied, 32-bit
numbers that allow users/machines to
initiate an Internet session. No personally
identiable inormation is associated with
these numbers, but every person on the
Internet must have one in order to access
content. Unlike user-supplied registrationdata, IP addresses are assigned by the
network, making it impossible to supply
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8/14/2019 Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation
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A Digital ElementTM
White Pape
250 Scientic Drive Suite 800
Norcross, GA 30092
+1 678.258.6300 PHONE
www.digital-element.net
intentionally misleading inormation.
The problem with these addresses as noted
in the last section is that the IP address
assignments to large corporations or
ISPs (which serve consumers) generally
reer to a single geographic location such
as corporate headquarters, and are not
assigned based on geography. Instead,
these blocks o allocated IP addresses
are assigned on a rst come, rst served
basis, making it extremely dicult to
accurately determine the geographic
location o the user or machine.
Another actor that makes it dicult to track
the location o IP addresses is that the
locations o IP addresses are in a constant
state o fux: the assignment o an individual
or block o IP addresses can change in an
instant. For example:
Addresses may be moved by the owner
o the IP block;
Addresses are allocated and reallocated
on a continual basis;
Addresses are constantly de-allocated
However, while addresses may change,
dynamic IP addresses, which are ound
in ISP dial-up networks, do not aect
NetAcuitys accuracy. While a user may get
a dierent address every time he or she
logs on through an ISPs point o presence
(POP), the IP address range itsel at the
POP is generally static. NetAcuity analyzes
the allocations at a given ISP, and stores this
inormation in the NetAcuity database.
Needless to say, keeping a current database
o IP addresses is a daunting task. Locationchanges o 2.5% to 5% o the IP address
base per month (which is made up o over 4
billion addresses total) is not unheard o. In
order or IP-based intelligence technology to
be accurate and reliable, a 24x7 monitoring
and updating eort needs to take place.
NetAcuity Technology
How It Works
Keeping track o such a massive universe o
IP addresses and working to tie geographic
and other relevant inormation such as
domain name, connection speed and ISP is
the core ocus o Digital Element. In 1999,
Digital Elements parent company, Digital
Envoy, was the rst to develop city-level
geolocation technology dubbed NetAcuity
utilizing more than 20 dierent methods
to determine the physical location o an
IP address down the city level worldwide,
and providing over one million views a
day rom dierent online vantage points.
NetAcuity utilizes Intelligent Trace Agents
(ITAs), which unction in much the same way
as a search engine spider. NetAcuity ITAs
constantly crawl the Internet, providing
a comprehensive, global view by utilizing
network tools, routing tables (BGP, ASN,
etc.) and triangulation rom various points
on the Internet, to name just a ew. Byutilizing this articial intelligence core and a
team o dedicated data analysts, NetAcuity
can determine the location rom which IP
addresses originate. This inormation is then
stored in a database at the companys data
analysis center and is constantly monitored
and updated.
The inormation is also sent to all NetAcuity
eld servers at customer locations
throughout the world on a weekly basis.
These seamless, non-perormance
impacting updates are done once a week
to ensure that clients and partners have the
most up-to-date inormation available.
Deployment
While keeping the constantly changing IP
address universe up to date is a dicult
task, deployment o NetAcuity technologyis not. Whether used as a standalone
solution or integrated into an enterprise
or networking application, the set up is a
simple task. Digital Element supplies its
customers with APIs in a number o dierent
languages, allowing a customers content
server to interace with the local NetAcuity
server collocated at the customers site.
The application server then passes an
IP address to the NetAcuity server, and
relevant inormation is returned about that IP
address.
Ater NetAcuity is installed and running,
making the technology integrate with
a clients web or enterprise application
alls to the client, thus ensuring complete
control when extracting inormation rom
the NetAcuity server and ensuring smooth
operations with existing applications.
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A Digital ElementTM
White Pape
250 Scientic Drive Suite 800
Norcross, GA 30092
+1 678.258.6300 PHONE
www.digital-element.net
SpecifcationsNetAcuity runs on virtually any o the shel
machine, and does not require a huge
capital outlay or proprietary or expensive
hardware.
Computing Platorms Red Hat Enterprise,
Linux 3+, Solaris 2.7+, FreeBSD 4.8+,
Windows 2000/2003 Servers
Client Platorm Integrates with all operating
systems and applications
Application Programming Interace (API)
C, C#, Perl, Java, PHP, .NET, Ruby, Python,
or custom
Database Updates Weekly
Processing Capable o over 30,000 IP
resolutions per second
Latency As low as .03 milliseconds
Support 24/7 technical support
Technology Stats
NetAcuitys geographic coverage is unsurpassed
in the marketplace at over 99.9999 percent o
the globe. Below are current database oerings,
with accuracy percentages included where
appropriate.
CountryAccuracy rates to 99.99% globally
Region or StateAccuracy rates to 97% globally
CityAccuracy rates to 96% globally
Connection SpeedAccuracy rates to 96%
DMA/MSA (US only)
Zip Code (US Only) Area Code (US Only)
Time Zone
Accuracy rates vary greatly. As with all IPTargeting technologies, accuracy rates will
remain variable on zip and area code targeting.
Accuracy rates are higher at the 3-digit zip
code level.
Domain NameAccuracy rate o 98+%
NAICS Codes
Org Name
ISP
Home/Business
LanguageCountry level only
Proxy
Company Name
Demographics
UK ITV Regions
Postal Codes
Canada & Germany
ConclusionNetAcuity IP Intelligence technology
provides an excellent way to non-invasively
gather new intelligence about the online
universe, and Digital Element delivers the de
acto standard in IP Intelligence, providing
coverage or 99.9999 percent o the Internet
and collecting more than one million views
daily rom dierent online vantage points.
Taking advantage o its patented technology
and a team o dedicated data analysts,
some o the worlds most recognized online
properties and businesses have chosenDigital Element or access to the most
comprehensive set o IP data available.
Through Digital Elements industry vision and
leadership, this non-invasive technology hasevolved into much more than geographic
inormation and now includes other
intelligence actors such as connection
speed, domain name, ISP and language.
For more inormation about Digital Element,
please visit www.digital-element.net
Digital Element, IP Intelligence Whitepaper
2009 Digital Element. All rights reserved