I got an email from Jake asking me about how to check where is the location of an IP address. OK, I try to enable IP address logging in my website wherever I can. If you send an email using the contact form, your IP address and hostname will be attached to the message that you send to me. Whenever you’re logged in to forum, I get to see your IP address. If you leave a comment on any of my articles, your IP address will be logged. Once you get in to raymond.cc, your IP address will automatically be logged by Webalizer. Don’t be afraid as it is used mainly for statistical purposes only. Other than that, it is good to have IP address logging because I get to see where the nice and bad people are from.
For example, I get to know most of the nice “thank you” emails that I get are from people in US. And then sadly there’s one particular person from MALAYSIA occasionally leaves useless and nonsense comments which can be easily deleted with a click. There’s also another country (which I don’t want to reveal) where many people beg for stuff (rapidshare, hacking emails and etc).
IP address logging is very important for online shopping website too. Once I was handling an ebook website for a company and there were a lot of charge backs from a specific country. I purchased an IP to Country database and blocked everyone coming from that country. The earnings wasn’t affected and charge backs has been reduced.
If you have an IP address and would like to trace where is the location, here’s what I usually use.
My first choice is VisualRoute. There is a desktop version of VisualRoute which cost money but I prefer to use their free web service to trace an IP. This VisualRoute Server provides a graphical traceroute and ping test from its server to any other network device you choose, useful for pinpointing network connectivity problems and identifying IP address locations.
It’s very easy to use. Just enter the IP address that you want to trace and hit the Start button. To see the location of the IP address, click the Map tab. VisualRoute loads pretty slow because it requires Java.
My second choice is IP2Location. This company is from Malaysia and they have full databases of IP address to country plus many other options. They have a live product demo where you can enter an IP address, and it’ll find the IP address’s location.
If you’re wondering why are they selling databases of IP – Country, there are actually many uses for web developers. Like I mentioned above, I manage to filter access from countries that has high fraud rate. Other than that, you can also display native language and currency, redirect web pages based on geographical, auto-selection of country on forms and etc…
There you have it, the 2 places where I go when I want to find out a location of an IP address. If you have any great sites that you use to trace an IP address, please share with us by leaving a comment.