[ncc-services-wg] IP geolocation services

Dear Vegard,

Vegard Svanberg wrote:
> 
> I would like to propose that RIPE NCC works together with other RIRs to
> see if it's possible to implement procedures/routines to notify
> providers and users of IP geolocation services of new, relocated and
> deleted allocations.
> 

The RIPE NCC whois database is available as a daily dump over FTP in a format
suitable for bulk text processing. This should serve as a sufficient
"notification mechanism" that meets your requirements, and I would expect that
any organization that makes it its business to provide GeoIP information to
paying customers would be aware of its existence and actively utilizing it to
this end.

One of the GeoIP providers (MaxMind) provides a free low-resolution GeoIP
database called CeoLiteCountry which happens to also be packaged by many *nix
distributions due to its liberal license. Being free, it is much more widely
used by content providers than commercial offerings.

Unfortunately, being a static database rather than a service, the accuracy of
the information contained in it depends on a fairly long chain of custody which
includes MaxMind (that presently updates it once a month, vs. their commercial
offering which is updated weekly), the various distribution packagers (the
geoip-database package in the current Ubuntu release, for example, contains data
which dates to March 2002), and individual system administrators which make use
of it. A problem no notification mechanism can address.

> 
> Apologies in advance if this has been discussed before -- I searched the
> archive, but got no hits. 
> 

I'm not sure if this is something the RIPE NCC or this work group should, or
even could, solve.

--
Respectfully yours,

David Monosov