Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation

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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A Digital ElementTM

White Pape


Norcross, GA 30092

+1 678.258.6300 PHONE


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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A Digital ElementTM

White Pape


Norcross, GA 30092

+1 678.258.6300 PHONE


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


Norcross, GA 30092

+1 678.258.6300 PHONE


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

Removing Barriers with IP Geolocation

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