Tor and IP2Location LITE
All, My name is Kim, the founder of IP2Location, a geolocation service provider since 2002. It looks like Tor is looking to review other providers for GeoIP service while I was reading one of a meeting minute for a meeting back in March 2017. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Amsterdam/Not... We are very interested in contributing to Tor and work on this matter. Tor can host and integrate IP2Location LITE (http://lite.ip2location.com) into their application. IP2Location has programming libraries in most languages. We can also work with developers if there is any technical issues. In term of accuracy, you can find the latest research paper published by TUM. IP2Location has good accuracy as reported in Table V. Title : HLOC: Hints-Based Geolocation Leveraging Multiple Measurement Frameworks Authors : Quirin Scheitle, Oliver Gasser, Patrick Sattler, Georg Carle from Technical University of Munich (TUM) PDF Access : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.09331.pdf Let me know if there is any questions. - Kim
On 2017-08-16 05:38, KL Liew wrote:
All,
Hi Kim,
My name is Kim, the founder of IP2Location, a geolocation service provider since 2002.
It looks like Tor is looking to review other providers for GeoIP service while I was reading one of a meeting minute for a meeting back in March 2017.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Amsterdam/Not...
We are very interested in contributing to Tor and work on this matter. Tor can host and integrate IP2Location LITE (http://lite.ip2location.com) into their application. IP2Location has programming libraries in most languages. We can also work with developers if there is any technical issues.
In term of accuracy, you can find the latest research paper published by TUM. IP2Location has good accuracy as reported in Table V.
Title : HLOC: Hints-Based Geolocation Leveraging Multiple Measurement Frameworks Authors : Quirin Scheitle, Oliver Gasser, Patrick Sattler, Georg Carle from Technical University of Munich (TUM) PDF Access : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.09331.pdf
Let me know if there is any questions.
Thanks for reaching out to us! It's indeed on our list to evaluate other geolocation databases and possibly switch over. I'll bring this topic up at tomorrow's metrics team meeting to discuss possible next steps for such an evaluation. I'll get back to you here to share the results. One question, though, that just came to mind: Are there archives available for past IP2Location LITE databases, or do you provide just the latest version? Having archives, possibly even back to 2002, would be pretty useful for Tor Metrics. (I didn't look around as much on your homepage, so please apologize if this question is already answered there.)
- Kim
All the best, Karsten
On 2017-08-16 21:19, Karsten Loesing wrote:
On 2017-08-16 05:38, KL Liew wrote:
All,
Hi Kim,
My name is Kim, the founder of IP2Location, a geolocation service provider since 2002.
It looks like Tor is looking to review other providers for GeoIP service while I was reading one of a meeting minute for a meeting back in March 2017.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2017Amsterdam/Not...
We are very interested in contributing to Tor and work on this matter. Tor can host and integrate IP2Location LITE (http://lite.ip2location.com) into their application. IP2Location has programming libraries in most languages. We can also work with developers if there is any technical issues.
In term of accuracy, you can find the latest research paper published by TUM. IP2Location has good accuracy as reported in Table V.
Title : HLOC: Hints-Based Geolocation Leveraging Multiple Measurement Frameworks Authors : Quirin Scheitle, Oliver Gasser, Patrick Sattler, Georg Carle from Technical University of Munich (TUM) PDF Access : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.09331.pdf
Let me know if there is any questions.
Thanks for reaching out to us!
It's indeed on our list to evaluate other geolocation databases and possibly switch over. I'll bring this topic up at tomorrow's metrics team meeting to discuss possible next steps for such an evaluation. I'll get back to you here to share the results.
So, we discussed this at our team meeting on Thursday and decided to further evaluate switching to IP2Location. That would be a non-trivial project, because we're using geolocation data in at least two places: 1. shipped with the core Tor program and 2. deployed on Tor Metrics services like Onionoo. And at least the former requires close coordination with Tor's network team. In any case we'll want to be sure whether this switch is the right move before starting such a project. The paper is a good start, but we might want to run more evaluations ourselves. For example, we could involve relay operators by asking them which resolved location is closer to reality. But even this evaluation requires writing some code, which puts it on a long list of things we'd like to do. All in all, we (Tor's metrics team) are considering it! But it'll be on the order of weeks or maybe months before we can move this forward.
One question, though, that just came to mind: Are there archives available for past IP2Location LITE databases, or do you provide just the latest version? Having archives, possibly even back to 2002, would be pretty useful for Tor Metrics. (I didn't look around as much on your homepage, so please apologize if this question is already answered there.)
You replied off-list:
We do not have archive for the IP2Location LITE. We just started this free database a few years back.
Okay. Maybe we could do something with archive.org in that case. It's not that we do have a complete history for MaxMind's files, except that we could probably create our own history from Tor's Git repository which contains files based on MaxMind's files. All the best, Karsten
- Kim
All the best, Karsten
On Sun, Aug 20, 2017 at 10:02:20PM +0200, Karsten Loesing wrote:
Okay. Maybe we could do something with archive.org in that case. It's not that we do have a complete history for MaxMind's files, except that we could probably create our own history from Tor's Git repository which contains files based on MaxMind's files.
I have a script that walks through the history of tor's git geoip files.
All in all, we (Tor's metrics team) are considering it! But it'll be on the order of weeks or maybe months before we can move this forward.
No problem. Just let me know if any helps needed. On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 4:02 AM, Karsten Loesing <karsten@torproject.org> wrote:
On 2017-08-16 21:19, Karsten Loesing wrote:
On 2017-08-16 05:38, KL Liew wrote:
All,
Hi Kim,
My name is Kim, the founder of IP2Location, a geolocation service provider since 2002.
It looks like Tor is looking to review other providers for GeoIP service while I was reading one of a meeting minute for a meeting back in March 2017.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/ meetings/2017Amsterdam/Notes/Metricsin5Years
We are very interested in contributing to Tor and work on this matter. Tor can host and integrate IP2Location LITE (http://lite.ip2location.com) into their application. IP2Location has programming libraries in most languages. We can also work with developers if there is any technical issues.
In term of accuracy, you can find the latest research paper published by TUM. IP2Location has good accuracy as reported in Table V.
Title : HLOC: Hints-Based Geolocation Leveraging Multiple Measurement Frameworks Authors : Quirin Scheitle, Oliver Gasser, Patrick Sattler, Georg Carle from Technical University of Munich (TUM) PDF Access : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.09331.pdf
Let me know if there is any questions.
Thanks for reaching out to us!
It's indeed on our list to evaluate other geolocation databases and possibly switch over. I'll bring this topic up at tomorrow's metrics team meeting to discuss possible next steps for such an evaluation. I'll get back to you here to share the results.
So, we discussed this at our team meeting on Thursday and decided to further evaluate switching to IP2Location.
That would be a non-trivial project, because we're using geolocation data in at least two places: 1. shipped with the core Tor program and 2. deployed on Tor Metrics services like Onionoo. And at least the former requires close coordination with Tor's network team.
In any case we'll want to be sure whether this switch is the right move before starting such a project. The paper is a good start, but we might want to run more evaluations ourselves. For example, we could involve relay operators by asking them which resolved location is closer to reality. But even this evaluation requires writing some code, which puts it on a long list of things we'd like to do.
All in all, we (Tor's metrics team) are considering it! But it'll be on the order of weeks or maybe months before we can move this forward.
One question, though, that just came to mind: Are there archives available for past IP2Location LITE databases, or do you provide just the latest version? Having archives, possibly even back to 2002, would be pretty useful for Tor Metrics. (I didn't look around as much on your homepage, so please apologize if this question is already answered there.)
You replied off-list:
We do not have archive for the IP2Location LITE. We just started this free database a few years back.
Okay. Maybe we could do something with archive.org in that case. It's not that we do have a complete history for MaxMind's files, except that we could probably create our own history from Tor's Git repository which contains files based on MaxMind's files.
All the best, Karsten
- Kim
All the best, Karsten
Hi Kim,
On 16 Aug 2017, at 13:38, KL Liew <hexasoft@gmail.com> wrote:
In term of accuracy, you can find the latest research paper published by TUM. IP2Location has good accuracy as reported in Table V.
Title : HLOC: Hints-Based Geolocation Leveraging Multiple Measurement Frameworks Authors : Quirin Scheitle, Oliver Gasser, Patrick Sattler, Georg Carle from Technical University of Munich (TUM) PDF Access : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.09331.pdf
Are there any accuracy comparisons between MaxMind and IP2Location? We have noticed that GeoIP providers often focus on location accuracy for residential customers. But we use our GeoIP databases to locate both Tor clients (mainly residential) and Tor relays (mainly data centre). How is your accuracy for data centres? T -- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor) teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Tim,
Are there any accuracy comparisons between MaxMind and IP2Location?
We have noticed that GeoIP providers often focus on location accuracy for residential customers. But we use our GeoIP databases to locate both Tor clients (mainly residential) and Tor relays (mainly data centre).
How is your accuracy for data centres?
I don't aware of any research papers targeting data center only. IP2Location should be highly accurate because we are using network routing information to determine physical location instead of registrant address. For example, IP2Location is reporting 185.56.163.144 as in France after reviewing the network routing information as below. However, if you search the same IP address in other geolocation providers, you might see it as reported as North Korea, a country with limited Internet access. Tracing route to 185.56.163.144 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 1 ms <10 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1 2 * * * Request timed out. 3 5 ms 4 ms 3 ms 10.233.65.32 4 178 ms 179 ms 179 ms 10.55.200.67 5 270 ms 267 ms 273 ms ams-ix2.eu.iptransit.com [80.249.211.47] 6 283 ms 285 ms 283 ms xe-4-3-1.r2.ams.iptransit.com [204.26.60.115] 7 283 ms 284 ms 283 ms te2-4.r3.ams.sara.nl.iptransit.com [204.26.60.6] 8 282 ms 279 ms 281 ms te1-2.r2.lux.iptransit.com [204.26.60.9] 9 285 ms 284 ms 284 ms 204.26.60.123 10 288 ms 287 ms 287 ms 185.56.163.144 - Kim On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 8:51 AM, teor <teor2345@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Kim,
On 16 Aug 2017, at 13:38, KL Liew <hexasoft@gmail.com> wrote:
In term of accuracy, you can find the latest research paper published by TUM. IP2Location has good accuracy as reported in Table V.
Title : HLOC: Hints-Based Geolocation Leveraging Multiple Measurement Frameworks Authors : Quirin Scheitle, Oliver Gasser, Patrick Sattler, Georg Carle from Technical University of Munich (TUM) PDF Access : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.09331.pdf
Are there any accuracy comparisons between MaxMind and IP2Location?
We have noticed that GeoIP providers often focus on location accuracy for residential customers. But we use our GeoIP databases to locate both Tor clients (mainly residential) and Tor relays (mainly data centre).
How is your accuracy for data centres?
T
-- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi, On 23/08/17 03:45, KL Liew wrote:
How is your accuracy for data centres?
I don't aware of any research papers targeting data center only. IP2Location should be highly accurate because we are using network routing information to determine physical location instead of registrant address.
For example, IP2Location is reporting 185.56.163.144 as in France after reviewing the network routing information as below. However, if you search the same IP address in other geolocation providers, you might see it as reported as North Korea, a country with limited Internet access.
It is possible that this address is used by North Korea, they don't have a massive IP allocation and I would expect that perhaps there are some tunnels, but I can't figure out where MaxMind have got this idea from. I think GeoIP is actually a far more difficult problem when it's not typical residential customers. Satellite customers, for instance, may use IP blocks that are spread across multiple countries. I would expect that cloud providers and larger datacenter providers are using tunnels of sorts between their datacenters. Tunnels kill any visibility into the real routing path. When attempting to perform GeoIP for routers, the problem is compounded as you don't know who really owns the router based on IP addresses alone, routers having multiple IP addresses, etc. With the influx of new TLDs and TLDs being chosen for vanity purposes, they are also not a useful indicator. I fear its the smaller providers, the more Tor-friendly providers, that are missing or inaccurately represented in the databases. When it comes to measuring the accuracy of databases for datacenters, I wonder if there could be some means for relay operators to self-report a location and then we can compare this with different databases. Is there a safe way for relay operators to prove that they control a relay and self-report the location of the relay without us having to have an extra field in relay descriptors or overload the contact field? Some sort of out-of-band means? Thanks, Iain.
Please find my comments below.
It is possible that this address is used by North Korea, they don't have a massive IP allocation and I would expect that perhaps there are some tunnels, but I can't figure out where MaxMind have got this idea from.
We aware of a small number of IP ranges tunneling to North Korea through some specific ISP. However, this IP address is registered by a VPN provider which also registered ranges in many other countries. We have no evidence that this VPN provider has a server located in those countries reported for their VPN service.
I think GeoIP is actually a far more difficult problem when it's not typical residential customers. Satellite customers, for instance, may use IP blocks that are spread across multiple countries.
I would expect that cloud providers and larger datacenter providers are using tunnels of sorts between their datacenters. Tunnels kill any visibility into the real routing path.
The large cloud providers such as AWS and Azure publishes their data center and IP addresses range to public. Data centers usually avoiding tunnels due to performance and cost-effectiveness. We do see rare cases required tunnels such as DDoS protection.
When it comes to measuring the accuracy of databases for datacenters, I wonder if there could be some means for relay operators to self-report a location and then we can compare this with different databases.
If this is possible, then it is a good way to perform benchmarking. However, we need to make sure the relay operator is giving the right information. - Kim On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 3:50 AM, Iain R. Learmonth <irl@torproject.org> wrote:
Hi,
On 23/08/17 03:45, KL Liew wrote:
How is your accuracy for data centres?
I don't aware of any research papers targeting data center only. IP2Location should be highly accurate because we are using network routing information to determine physical location instead of registrant address.
For example, IP2Location is reporting 185.56.163.144 as in France after reviewing the network routing information as below. However, if you search the same IP address in other geolocation providers, you might see it as reported as North Korea, a country with limited Internet access.
It is possible that this address is used by North Korea, they don't have a massive IP allocation and I would expect that perhaps there are some tunnels, but I can't figure out where MaxMind have got this idea from.
I think GeoIP is actually a far more difficult problem when it's not typical residential customers. Satellite customers, for instance, may use IP blocks that are spread across multiple countries.
I would expect that cloud providers and larger datacenter providers are using tunnels of sorts between their datacenters. Tunnels kill any visibility into the real routing path.
When attempting to perform GeoIP for routers, the problem is compounded as you don't know who really owns the router based on IP addresses alone, routers having multiple IP addresses, etc.
With the influx of new TLDs and TLDs being chosen for vanity purposes, they are also not a useful indicator.
I fear its the smaller providers, the more Tor-friendly providers, that are missing or inaccurately represented in the databases.
When it comes to measuring the accuracy of databases for datacenters, I wonder if there could be some means for relay operators to self-report a location and then we can compare this with different databases.
Is there a safe way for relay operators to prove that they control a relay and self-report the location of the relay without us having to have an extra field in relay descriptors or overload the contact field? Some sort of out-of-band means?
Thanks, Iain.
_______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 9:36 PM, KL Liew <hexasoft@gmail.com> wrote:
It is possible that this address is used by North Korea, they don't have a massive IP allocation and I would expect that perhaps there are some tunnels, but I can't figure out where MaxMind have got this idea from.
We aware of a small number of IP ranges tunneling to North Korea through some specific ISP. However, this IP address is registered by a VPN provider which also registered ranges in many other countries. We have no evidence that this VPN provider has a server located in those countries reported for their VPN service.
Allow me to jump in here and mention that I have done some work on auditing the locations of VPN servers via active probes (very briefly: pingtimes to hosts in known locations give upper bounds on the distances to those hosts), and I suspect I know which VPN provider you are referring to and their claims are indeed ... let's say questionable. I'm not yet at liberty to share any more details of my results, but you may find the software at https://github.com/zackw/active-geolocator/ of interest. Applying the same techniques to Tor is something I would be interested in helping with, though not a personal priority. zw
participants (6)
-
David Fifield -
Iain R. Learmonth -
Karsten Loesing -
KL Liew -
teor -
Zack Weinberg