IP Geolocation from several sources

IP address geolocation is not a very accurate thing. There are several companies on the market that maintain IP address geolocation databases and you still can’t be sure their data is 100% correct. This is why we use and show results from several different geolocation providers.

Assuming that there is no 100% accurate IP-to-geolocation service, we query each IP address against three different geolocation databases (IP2Location LITE, MaxMind GeoLite2,
DB-IP Lite), analyze the results and choose the most common one to show on the map.

For example, if two of three geolocation providers report that some IP resides in the United States, and one reports that it is from Greece, we’ll show you the US location on the map.

Why it can be useful? At first, it could give a better accuracy. Also, having several results, you have the opportunity to decide on your own, how to interpret them.

Here are several examples:

Example 1. Colombia or Switzerland?

Let’s look at the geolocation results for the IP address 45.178.7.246:

We have two detections of Colombia and one of Switzerland. We can also see the organization name “SWISS GLOBAL SERVICES S.A.S” in the “IP data” section. Doing a simple Google search we can find the company website and read:

Our offer:

Private data center in Switzerland, which provide more than 94,000 square feet of placement space with access to major local and global markets.

So, theoretically, this IP address can belong to a Colombian hosting company which provides network facilities from the Switzerland.

Let’s do another check. Go down the page, to the “Useful resources” section, and click the “Visual traceroute” link.

Now we clearly see that traffic goes from Europe to the Colombia via the North America, which means that IP2Location was wrong in this case:

Example 2. United Kingdom or Cyprus?

Let’s check another IP address that has different geolocation results:

MaxMind locates it in Cyprus, IP2Location and DB-IP both think it’s in the UK.

Please note, that Visual traceroute will not work well for this IP, because it apparently uses the MaxMind database to determine IP locations.

Let’s scroll down and use another external tool: “Ping + MTR from multiple locations”. After some time, looking at the MTR results, we can confirm that this IP is located in the United Kingdom and MaxMind is wrong:

Wouldn’t one Full geolocation database be better than three Lite ones?

You may say: “You get wrong results because you are using Lite database versions, they are inaccurate.” Yes, they are less accurate. But one more time — there is no 100%-accurate GeoIP service. We’ve checked the above IPs with fully-functional database versions and got the same results!

The full database IP2Location DB24 still detects Switzerland for 45.178.7.246:

GeoIP2 Precision: City returns Cyprus for 31.220.20.202 exactly like the Lite version does:

Thus, it is worth to use several geolocation services simultaneously for more precise results.

Pretty formatted IP address whois results

As you may know, raw whois output is not very user friendly and can be hard to read by non tech-savvy people.
We’ve spent a lot of time to make whois results better formatted. We also do some postprocessing and fine tuning — all for a better readabililty and informativity.

Now you can get straight to the information you may need: what network this IP address belongs to, which organization owns it, who administers it and what are the technical or abuse contacts.

Raw whois vs our IP Lookup

For example, look at the raw whois output:

and now how we render it:

ARIN Whois/RDAP vs our IP Lookup

You can also compare the better-formatted ARIN RDAP whois output:

…to the whois results from our IP Lookup tool:

Neustar WHOIS IP Lookup Tool vs our IP Lookup

Explore the results of WHOIS IP Lookup Tool from Neustar, which is is the first result in Google for “ip address whois”:

…and see how much more information you can get with our tool:

Both IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses are supported

Unlike some other utilities which only support an IPv4 addresses, our tool fully supports both IPv4 and IPv6 IP address lookups:

Autonomous system details

Among other data, our tool also finds and shows the properties of an autonomous system the IP address belongs to. Autonomous system usually identifies the top-level hosting or internet provider of the examined host:

Routing information

Unlike the whois data which shows the organisation registered a particular network block, BGP data can reveal who is actually using it. We show the BGP prefix, its registry, country, allocation date and provide a link to the RADB whois where you can view the routing prefix details:

Websites on this IP

In the “Websites on this IP” section you can view the list of top websites that are hosted on the IP address:

Links to the additional resources

As you have seen above, there are services that can help in further IP address research. We list a selection of such resources, like “Ping + MTR from multiple locations”, “Visual traceroute”, and a number of IP blacklist and fraud checkers:

Do you know a free, worthwhile service or tool providing additional information about IP addresses that should be on our list of useful resources? Fell free to suggest it in the comments!