Knowing a server's location could be important from a legal perspective. Jurisdiction for a lawsuit is based at least in part on connection of the place where the basis for the lawsuit occurred to the place of the court in which a litigant is seeking to file suit. So, for example, in a case involving defamation on a website that was hosted on a server in state X, state X becomes a legally viable option for filing suit, even if the company running the site is headquartered in state Y. Donna Cavallini -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alex Halavais Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 5:03 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] netcraft question As earlier responses noted, locating servers is a shaky business, and even once you have, it's not clear why it matters in many cases. Until recently, my personal website had a server in Hong Kong (IP location) managed by a web host in Sofia, the name was registered to a Seattle address (whois record), by a Parisian registrar. The only piece of locational data in all that which was correct (Buffalo, at the time) was the ICBM tags on some of the pages. So, be sure you know what it is you are trying to locate, and if the server is really it. There are commercial databases of IP address geolocation. These are somewhat reliable, some of the time :). You might, for example, play with: http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm There is an effort at developing a free/open IP location database: not quite as complete (~50% correct!), but worth supporting. In fact, if AIR-L readers go and hit this database and check to make sure it correctly locates your IP address, it would take only a few seconds, and help to develop a great public resource: http://www.hostip.info - Alex -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/