Paid Geo Location API

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greenleaves

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Jan 25, 2008
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I'm currently involved in the development of a software.

We need to mass check IP's for geolocation (the volume of queries will vary, but it can come in bursts of many per second)

I've seen a few free ones and paid ones. But as a paranoid marketeer, I tend not to trust random reviews I find.

So, do any of you have any recommendations? I'd prefer to use a paid service, since we then have more 'rights' than with a free one which might not be as efficient when we have a query spikes.

Our main concern is reliability of service, second accuracy, 3rd pricing. If the first two are on point, the 3rd isn't as important (so long as it isn't crazy)
 


Without question, Maxmind is the way to go. You can download the .dat file free of charge on their site, and implementation is easy. Since the IP database will be on your server, requests are quick, as there's no waiting for a web service or anything.

Then if accuracy is paramount, grab the paid copy of their IP database. IIRC, it's only a few hundred bucks.
 
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Just download the MaxMind database and run it locally.

The free one works good for me. You could also purchase one from MaxMind or ip2location.

I don't understand the point of using an API service which is slower, more expensive and requires more bandwidth.

There is open source software available to make this process easier.
 
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alpaca said:
Just download the MaxMind database and run it locally.

The free one works good for me. You could also purchase one from MaxMind or ip2location.

I don't understand the point of using an API service which is slower, more expensive and requires more bandwidth.

There is open source software available to make this process easier.
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Because if you ever used both systems over a LONG period of time you would realize the API is almost always more accurate and updated faster then the free DB. What I do is use both. If the API is down, taking to long, or returned a null value, I have my script pull from the self hosted database as a backup.

Sometimes you need mission critical info ( yes even in geolocation ) when you have to know what city someone is in ( even if its just going off the nearest ISP and not user location ). Having used the API has saved me several hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past.

Also the paid version offers more data that also comes in useful that you don't get the free version.
 
^^^ Thanks man, great stuff. We'll likely be implementing locally and run an API query only if the local stuff doesn't hit it. It isn't mission critical, but it is important. I think the balance now is going to be speed (over many queries done in spikes), then to be 1000% accurate. If something comes up weird/doesn't come up, then we'll go through the API.

I'd hit you up with rep luv, but:

You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours, try again later.
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You can do tens of thousands lookups per sec with local MaxMind database, especially if you preload it in memory. Disk lookups can be slower, but again, with c driver it is thousands requests/sec even when the file was not cached by OS.
 
Anybody have success with Geolify?

I'm wanting to use MaxMind for a new project. You guys recommending it, is it at least 95% accurate or more?
 
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