deepBDC

Disclaimer: I work at BigDataCloud.

You can try our ASN lookup tool: https://www.bigdatacloud.com/asn-lookup/

It provide wide variety of data objects, and also provide map view where possible to showcase the active region of operation ( its a unique feature of the API), plus heaps of data. You can test the API for free and access all the data objects.

Any doubts or queries, please let me know.

All the comments above have made valid points related to IP geolocation APIs. There are already various free and paid IP-to-address APIs available in the market.

Some are expensive because of the effort their team has put into continuously monitoring the accuracy of their service and keeping the data up-to-date. It is one thing to build an API layer on top of the free data sources and provide for low cost, but keeping the operation running with high up-time, improving data accuracy daily, adding new data sources and handling ambiguity with location data is quite challenging and requires a proper dedicated team.

If you are a single person building this service, it can certainly take a toll on you. Nevertheless, there are many free APIs available which is just a wrapper on top of Maxmind's free data source.

But if you can build a niche group of people who willingly pay to use your service, it is possible and as you mentioned be able to offset the running cost.

Hello!

BigDataCloud is an Australian based Tech Startup and I am excited to announce our latest feature update to our most popular free client-side reverse geocoding API.

More and more websites and mobile apps, today, are requesting to access user's location data with HTML5 geolocation API or the default location services of iOS/Android.

However, the opt-in rate for the sharing of location data is quite low and businesses have to rely on an alternative method like IP geolocation to identify user's current location. Furthermore, the increasing concerns over user privacy mean that businesses have to be careful about how they retrieve and process location data.

Hence, we have decided to address both of the issues in a unique and latest update of our most popular Free Client-side Reverse Geocoding API.

The new update allows you to reverse-geocode the current user's coordinates (if consent is given) or provide an estimation of locality information based on the client's IP address.

Some key features and benefits of the API are:

- Free forever!

- NEW - Backed up by the world's most accurate next-generation

- IP Geolocation technology (patent pending)

- Enterprise-grade redundant infrastructure. Operated from eight geographically diverse data centres across the globe

- Better than 99.999% availability

- Unprecedentedly fast response time (sub-millisecond)

- Delivers administrative/non-administrative boundaries-based results

- Provides detailed locality information of a user in 148 common world languages

- Full postal code level geographical accuracy for the US, Great Britain, and Australia (partial for other countries)

- Full global coverage, including seas and oceans

- Unique IP Geolocation fallback to provide estimated location data even when no client’s geocoordinates are available

- Friendly with GDPR and GDPR-like privacy laws

- Responsive customer support, even for entirely free APIs

- Geocoder data updated weekly, IP Geolocation daily.

No contract, no hidden fees, and no account required. Both commercial and non-commercial uses permitted with no rate restrictions as long as conditions of our Fair Use Policy are met.

Thank you for checking out.

The core technology used by all the companies to determine location from IP address is called IP geolocation. The method of finding a location from IP address varies widely across IP geolocation service providers.

It is important to know how IP addresses are distributed and allocated across the globe in order to understand the challenges faced by IP geolocation services.

Under a global organisation IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), there are five regional internet registries that manage IP address distribution across the globe. For example, APNIC is responsible for managing IP addresses in Asia-Pacific region. This way, the entire block of 4.2 billion IPv4 addresses are distributed across the world like any other fixed resources.

When an ISP or organisations purchase a block of IP address from the respective regional internet registry, the details of the ownership of an IP address is registered in a publicly available database called WhoIS. And this database is commonly used by all the IP geolocation service providers. However, this is only one datapoint.

The key challenge of using only this database is that an IP address is rarely used in the region where it's ownership is registered. Often these IP addresses are not utilised in the same address where it is registered or they are resold to different organisation who may or may not be present in the same continent. These secondary transactions of IP addresses are not regularly updated on WhoIs database resulting in inaccurate information. Therefore, many sophisticated IP geolocation services like Maxmind, Digital Element and BigDataCloud go to a large extent to collect maximum ground-truth data about the IP address using various data collection methods (from users or network), partnerships and using AI/machine learning algorithms.

Hence, if you have access to global internet user base (like Google) you are more likely to present a more accurate IP geolocation service. Even then it is challenging to get accurate IP to location information because the ownership of IP address and its allocation frequently changes. Even while using an internet at home, your IP address is regularly refreshed by your local ISP. This is done by ISPs so that they can serve internet to the entire customer base. Remember that IP address is a finite resources. ISPs might have only few blocks of IP address which they need to dynamically allocate to their active customer base. This is more extreme in case of mobile network where it is possible for multiple users across the country to have a same IP address at some point of time. Therefore, location association of an IP address needs to be continuously updated.

The use of VPNs and proxies further complicate the matter. VPNs and Proxies mask your IP address and route your traffic from a different path making it difficult to for IP geolocation services. They might be able to detect that the connection is VPN but will not be able to identify the actual location of the user. This also happens in case of browsing the internet from your home when you are inside your company's VPN.

Besides IP address, companies can also find your location with the help of WiFi access point. For this, user needs to share their location and provide permission for browsers to scan your WiFi network. With the help of mass WiFi access point data collection, it is possible to have a database of location of WiFi Access point and using a trilateration or multilateration, the system can pin point your location. This will use the signal strength of surrounding WiFi access points. Similar to GPS technology used in mobile devices. This method has its own draw backs too. For example, if a user doesn't provide permission to track, it is impossible to locate his/her location. In case of areas where there are weak signal strength, the method will not be able to locate accurately.

It all depends on how well you know yourself and your desires. We are motivated by our desires to shape our purpose and give meaning to our life.

You mentioned your lack of interest in PhD program despite already 1.5 years into it. You might want to dig deeper into yourself to understand why that is the case. When you say meaningful, do you mean something that will change the world.

If you love doing something but you don't get recognised for it, would that bother you? If you did get recognised for a work which you were not passionate about. Would you still find meaning in it.

When you get more honest with yourself, the easier it will be to find the work that is meaningful. If you are not, then it might take years and you might only to bouncing from one work to another.

After I completed by engineering, I started a company with my friends - thinking this will be meaningful experience. And it was in many ways. It helped me understand myself and the world better. But, it took many years to figure out exactly what I wanted to do and where my heart lies. Most people don't take that journey.

So, if you want to find meaningful work, you need to start on the self exploration journey. Hope that was useful.