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Abstract:
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A highly accurate client-independent geolocation service stands to be an
important goal for the Internet. Despite an extensive research effort
and significant advances in this area, this goal has not yet been met.
Motivated by the fact that the best results to date are achieved by
utilizing additional ’hints’ beyond inherently inaccurate delay-based
measurements, we propose a novel geolocation method that fundamentally
escalates the use of external information. In particular, many entities
(e.g., businesses, universities, institutions) host their Web services
locally and provide their actual geographical location on their Websites.
We demonstrate that the information provided in this way, when combined
with network measurements, represents a precious geolocation resource.
Our methodology automatically extracts, verifies, utilizes, and
opportunistically inflates such Web-based information to achieve high
accuracy. Moreover, it overcomes many of the fundamental inaccuracies
encountered in the use of absolute delay measurements. We demonstrate
that our system can geolocate IP addresses 50 times more accurately
than the best previous system, i.e., it achieves a median error distance
of 690 meters on the corresponding data set.
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