[183516] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Akamai Geolocation Secret Sauce?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick W. Gilmore)
Sat Sep 5 00:41:31 2015
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAE6mAxw+Gu4V3xz8g41SwvjO=MYuK1x=RUxifWiMZ35JDXAg+w@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2015 00:36:16 -0400
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
Akamai=E2=80=99s DB is frequently updated, not dependent upon SWIP, and =
has been measured as the most accurate of all the providers for =
something over a decade.
How they do it is proprietary. And sure, it can be wrong. Very wrong. =
But those times are rare, and they are good at updating when you tell =
them.
If you think about it, Akamai updates its CDN map frequently, and is not =
limited to the prefixes in the DFZ. So keeping a geo-location DB - not =
giving away any secrets here, just hypothesizing - seems like it would =
almost, but not quite, just fall out of all the other work they are =
doing anyway.
--=20
TTFN,
patrick
> On Sep 4, 2015, at 11:37 PM, Gustavo Rodrigues Ramos =
<gustavo@nexthop.com.br> wrote:
>=20
> Hello Ray,
>=20
> I'm not familiar with Akamai's secret sauce. But I suppose geolocation
> databases can be outdated very fast over time and things are getting =
worst
> with the ipv4 depletion...
>=20
> However, if you have a very large number of nodes spread across the =
globe,
> you could use rtt and edns0 client subnet to map users and their =
locations.
>=20
> =
https://blogs.akamai.com/2013/03/intelligent-user-mapping-in-the-cloud.htm=
l
> =
https://blogs.akamai.com/2015/08/end-user-mapping-brings-users-closer-to-i=
nternet-nirvana.html
>=20
> Regards,
> Gustavo.
>=20
>=20
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Ray Van Dolson <rvandolson@esri.com> =
wrote:
>=20
>> Anyone familiar with how Akamai does its geolocation? Presumably =
they
>> do more than Maxmind/WHOIS, but I suppose one or both of those could
>> factor in?
>>=20
>> For those of you with ARIN IP space, do you typically SWIP things to
>> yourself to help clarify the locations where the IP space physically
>> resides to feed into Geolocation databases?
>>=20
>> Thanks,
>> Ray
>>=20
