Bringing location to IP Addresses with IP Geolocation

IP Geolocation allows us to assign a geographicallocation to an IP addressallowing us to build up a picture of the person behind that IP address.This can have many potential benefits for business and other types of application.The IP address of a device is unique to that device and as such the location can be narrowed down from the continent to the country and even to the street address of the device. This method of tracking can have very broad resultsand can sometimes only get an accurate result with some input from the user about their location. In some countries laws are in place that state a service can only track you as far as your country without your consent. If the user consents then the service can view your ISP's logs and track you as accurately as possible. The ability to determine the exact location of a person connecting over the Internet can not only lead to innovative location based services but it can also dramatically optimise the shipment of data from end to end. In this paper we will look at applications and methodologies(both traditional and more recent) for IP Geolocation.