See Also

Geo IP

The project was done for a premier provider of comprehensive roadside assistance and insurance programs for corporate use throughout the United States and Canada. Geo IP is a software solution that provides highly accurate IP geo location software engine and API that can be easily integrated into different software development environments.

Solution

Geo IP is a software solution that provides highly accurate IP geo location software engine and API that can be easily integrated into different software development environments. Geo IP is developed with proprietary technologies to create geographical, organizational, and topological “data maps” of the Internet space. By mapping 4.29 billion IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to geographical locations, Geo IP enables businesses to immediately understand geo-graphical information of website visitors and unique access environment associated with visitors’ IP addresses. Geo IP provides companies with the means to unobtrusively know location information of website visitors and other information derived from visitors’ location without using cookies or unwanted user registration.

Architecture

Database is used to store all information, generate centralized statistics, and maintain data integrity and business logic.
Client part. Client application is presented by windows form where a user is able to query output of specified application, then form parses it and create request to our GeoIP web service to get latitude and longitude; and after resolving location of ips, create request to Virtual Earth to display world map with ip’s locations.
Server part. As mentioned above, the server part is implemented as Windows Service and is responsible for data processing. It’ll convert ip addresses into location. We are able to get the following data:
  • Country name
  • City name
  • ZIP code
  • Latitude
  • Longitude
But we have to understand that we’ll use whois service for obtaining this information. There’re 5 servers in the world providing some information about specified address in text.
  • AfriNIC (whois.afrinic.net)
  • APNIC (whois.apnic.net)
  • ARIN (whois.arin.net)
  • LACNIC (whois.lacnic.net)
  • RIPE (whois.ripe.net)
Data migration module provides fast automated migration of previously collected data to new central storage.

Tools and Technologies

  • MS Visual Studio 2005
  • MS SQL Server 2000/2005
  • IIS 6.0
  • SQL scripting for data collection

Benefits

The entire system design is done to satisfy client’s requirements and to make it easy for further support and enhancement. The resulting application has an open architecture to allow its easy enhancement and development, open (layer based) architecture allows easy replacing of old modules for new developed ones that affects application quality and functionality without recompiling main modules. Layer based architecture means that the application is strongly designed and separated on several layers so that every layer provides its service by exposing a set of interfaces, classes and service functions that are used by client layers.
Post development support was provided to the customer in order to implement new features and improvements requested by end users after some experience in using the system.
Documentation supplied as a part of delivery package covers all aspects of the system, including hardware/software requirements and configuration, deployment guide, configuration guide, migration guide and user manual.