US Cable Support → W.O.W. > My IP address leads to my neighbor

My IP address leads to my neighbor

On various sites that use my IP address to verify location I see my neighbor's physical street address. That can't be good.

Is the cable tap on the pole in your neighbor's yard?

Post some sites as examples where this happens.

Mine puts me across the street. It's not exactly an exact gps the location.

I don't know how accurate it is for others, but I didn't think it was meant to be precise to the address. I know Google knows if you have android or use maps a lot and it remembers.

Geolocation on the web isn't just based off IP address. If you using a desktop, that's all it can use and usually it identifies your city. If you are using a laptop, such websites can access your Wi-Fi adapter and check which networks it can see. Based on which networks are nearby and their signal strengths, the geolocation API can estimate your location with fairly high accuracy. But it may still have error high enough to place you one house away. If you using a cell phone, it can use not only IP address and Wi-Fi, but cellular signal information and GPS. GPS should narrow down your location to +/- a few meters.

My explanation doesn't explain why your desktop also has such a precise (street level) location fix. Maybe Yahoo saves previous location fixes to your IP address.

If you are using a Mac it is querying the OS for your location. The location comes from wifi data. Otherwise it wouldn't ask you for permission.

When I click on "Map your current location more precisely", it puts the blue dot right on the front step of the apartment building I live in. Otherwise, it places the placemark on the location of city hall.

Using a Macbook Pro laptop with OS X 10.8.4.

Today on my laptop it put me at a house across the street from the previous neighbor. Way too far away for it to detect a WiFi network. Also no way we are on the same tap. So I don't know what is going on.

In their FAQs for current location it says: Your current location is based on the IP address provided by the internet service provider that connects the device you are using to the internet. From this information, Yahoo! can often determine the nearest city to where your computer, phone, or other device is located.

So it uses IP addy for the "general" location and WiFi for exact?? Still doesn't explain how it puts me on the block behind me across the street.

Was hoping Dan might comment on IP addys in terms of them being unique, how those on the same tap interact, etc.

I just had a rude IM from someone calling me crazy and wondering why I'm knocking on my neighbor's door asking why I'm connected to their computer.

I'm always amazed at how the written word can be misinterpreted.

The whole point of my post was that I was wondering why Yahoo mapped me to a neighbor's house. They mention using IP addresses so I asked a question about it. Geesh.

There is nothing special about an IP address. It is just a thirty-two bit number assigned to any device in a DHCP pool. They are assigned, in groups, by IANA to RIRs, which further sub-assigns smaller groups to ISPs.

The only way to know where, physically, they are assigned individually is by "special knowledge". Grossly, by which entity has them, and where their central facilities are. Hence why I can be grossly located as "somewhere in the S.F. Bay Area" of California. Finer guessing can be used if the assigning entity uses some kind of code in the PTR record; such that "adsl-64-161-28-233.dsl.sntc01.pacbell.net" can be reasonably guessed as being in Santa Clara, California by knowing that "sntc" is the old Ma Bell city code, or that "nuq05s02-in-f20.1e100.net" can reasonably guessed as being in Mt. View, California by knowing that "nuq" is the aviation code for Moffett Federal Airfield (formerly "NAS Moffett Field") which is actually located in Mt. View, California (though it was cited as being in neighboring Sunnyvale when it was first opened as, "NAS Sunnyvale").

On my old ATTIS (formerly SBCIS) ADSL circuit, various geo-locater sites put me in various cities, such as Novato, California, or San Leandro, California; despite that I was in San José; and closer to Cupertino (west of Santa Clara) than downtown (east of Santa Clara).

As for a tap in the HFC, that is topologically transparent to the CPE; it has no machine-level awareness of IP addresses. The CPE pulls IP addresses from a DHCP server; probably upstream from the CMTS.

The only way to refine a location beyond the gross area, as I have described functionality, is to obtain a precision guess from some kind of survey of neighborhood IP addresses; which is what Google has done by "wardriving". And, based on the privacy statement offered to me by Yahoo! when I clicked on "Map your current location more precisely", Yahoo! is relying on data in that Google data base. My guess is that Google matched peak signal strength of wireless networks to the addresses they were in front of at the peak signal strength reading. So the last 50 feet, or so, is still something of a guess.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

I wouldn't worry about it since internet mapping isn't very accurate. If I use Google street view to stop right in front of my house it shows the wrong street address and if I use Yahoo maps it shows me in downtown Phoenix about 35 miles away! If you want accuracy use a GPS instead of the internet.

Ahh. Now things are making sense
I wondered how wireless could ever give a location as some state.

I once located the residence of a hapless lassie using the signal strength meter of an El Cheapo® Radio Shack CB radio. I drove around as she was talking, until I got to a point where the needle was maxed, then asked her a somewhat general question about her neighborhood. The next action I took was somewhat dangerous, and definitely dubious ... As the time was near midnight, I sneaked through a side gate, found a small pebble in the back yard, and bounced it off of a bedroom window. Then ran like Hell out of the yard, remounted, and drove away ... listening to the lassie freaking out to her friends.

This was in the mid '70s, before there was GPS.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum