Help Help on ISP

[m.a.hamid]

Hey there, I have been wondering if anyone can revealed a mystory. Whenever i go to chat, there's some pals always know where or what service provider i am using and which country i am sitting in even my ISP just make up with nothing but numbers. I know when i click someone's profile, i can tell that he or she is using this or that ISP and it is easy to tell just by looking at it. And some ISP is made up with domain name which is end up with some abreviation of some country like .sg as singapore, .ca as canada etc etc. But Question is when some ISP make up with just numbers like 142.33.02.109, How am i able to tell that Where or in what country he or she is? How do i figure it out. Thanks for letting me know.

[glc]

Install a networking utility such as NetLab and do a DNS lookup and/or a traceroute on the IP address.

[Xayd]

You can also just copy their IP address over to a site that has whois search functions. All of the domain name registrar's sites have this utility on them. When you plug in an IP address, it'll tell you who owns that pool of numbers, and the location of that person/company, as well as contact info, email addresses, etc.

Xayd

[Dave22]

http://www.arin.net/
http://www.apnic.net/
http://www.ripe.net/
http://www.iana.org/

[m.a.hamid]

Thank you all for responding. But still confused.

[Xayd]

Basically it works like this. Every computer on the internet at any given time has an address, which is the list of numbers that you're talking about. In order to get to www.pcmech.com when you type it in your browser, your browser has to check the name against a server to get the "actual" address, which is the string of numbers. These are DNS servers, DN stands for Domain Name, a server that matches domain names (like www.pcmech.com) to IP addresses (the string of numbers). IP addresses are public, like street addresses. Anyone can find out what IP address a computer has, and can find out who's in charge of that IP address.

Now, when you connect to the internet, your ISP assigns your computer a "temporary" IP address from the pool of IP addresses that it owns. The actual address will change each time you connect, but only slightly. For instance, my current IP address is 12.31.194.19 here at work. If I go over to www.plumb.org/tekmage/Inspire/whois.html and look myself up, it'll show me that this IP address belongs to a pool which is owned by Law Office Information Systems, the company I work for.

I get a return that looks like this...

Law Office Information System, Inc. (NETBLK-LAWAR-194) LAWAR-194
12.31.194.0 - 12.31.194.255

So, the company I work for owns all addresses between these two numbers. When you log into a chat room, the chat server sniffs out your IP address and displays it. So if I go into a chat room right now, anyone can take that IP address that my chat client reported and go look it up, to find that I work at Law Office Information Systems, in Van Buren, Arkansas. On most "pools" of IP addresses you get a contact phone number, physical address, and email address in the record as well when you look them up, so that tells you the ISP's location and if not that at least a phone number or email address, so you can easily find out where that ISP is. If your ISP's contact info for their pool of IP addresses is jim@net.net, then I just go to www.net.net and find a phone number and address. Voila, now I know where your ISP is, and you can't be far away from them if it's a local ISP.

Xayd

[This message has been edited by Xayd (edited 08-30-2000).]

[m.a.hamid]

Thank you Xayd for your long explanation, but i don't know as you said it is easy to find out the person't location and everything just by seeing String IP address. And I still not find it easy for me to figure their location. Thank you once again Xayd, glc and Dave.

[Dave22]

quote:

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Originally posted by m.a.hamid:
Thank you Xayd for your long explanation, but i don't know as you said it is easy to find out the person't location and everything just by seeing String IP address. And I still not find it easy for me to figure their location. Thank you once again Xayd, glc and Dave.

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It won't be easy since, as was pointed out, a block of addresses can be owned by any particular company BUT that company may be an ISP or some other type of network reseller that may not be physically located where the host is that you're looking at.

During my frequent firewall log inspections, I run across many IP addresses that I'd like to get an idea of where they are, but hit dead ends. It's what makes the Internet semi-anonymous.