IP Geolocation Using Traceroute Location Propagation and IP Range Location Interpolation

ABSTRACT Many online services, including search engines, content delivery networks, ad networks, and fraud detection utilize IP geolocation databases to map IP addresses to their physical locations. However, IP geolocation databases are often inaccurate. We present a novel IP geolocation technique based on combining propagating IP location information through traceroutes with IP interpolation. Using a large ground truth set, we show that physical locations of IP addresses can be propagated along traceroute paths. We also experiment with and expand upon the concept of IP range location interpolation, where we use the location of individual addresses in an IP range to assign a location to the entire range. The results show that our approach significantly outperforms commercial geolocation by up to 31 percentage points. We open source several components to aid in reproducing our results.