ip-countryside

This tool creates an ip-to-country database, which can be used in multiple applications for geolocating internet users based on their IP address.

If you only need the ip2country database itself (not the program creating it),
you can download it here (updated weekly).

A demo can be found here.

Detailed Information

This tool creates an ip-to-country database, which can be used in multiple applications for geolocating internet users based on their IP address. The database is built automatically out of the 5 Regional Internet Registrars (RIR) databases: AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE. The resulting database is a plain sorted text file in the format

"ip_from ip_to country_code"

where IPs are 32 bit integers and the 2 letter country code is as defined in ISO 3166. This tool uses the delegation files of all RIRs and additionally for APNIC and RIPE it uses the detailed databases.

In contrast to other tools, our database is free, self-creatable and more accurate.

Prerequisite

The following files are required to build the database. The script 'getDBs.sh' can be used for downloading them:

ripencc Delegation file
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/stats/delegated-ripencc-latest
ripencc Database
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/split
apnic Delegation file
ftp://ftp.apnic.net/pub/stats/apnic/delegated-apnic-latest
apnic Database
ftp://ftp.apnic.net/apnic/whois-data/APNIC/split
arin Delegation file
ftp://ftp.arin.net/pub/stats/arin/delegated-arin-latest
lacnic Delegation file
ftp://ftp.lacnic.net/pub/stats/lacnic/delegated-lacnic-latest
afrinic Delegation file
ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic/delegated-afrinic-latest

The config file should be modified to point to the actual location AND names of the above mentioned files.

Installation

Run the getDBs.sh script, this will download a fresh copy of the delegation files and the databases
Check the 'config' file.
:~$ make
:~$ ./createDb to execute the program

How it works

The program will start with parsing all the delegation files (ripencc, apnic, lacnic, arin, and afrinic). The parser will return the delegation files in the form of ipFrom, ipTo, country and registry. The results of parsing the delegation files are stored in one file called "Testout". Now the list that contains all delegation files are sorted and checked to see if there are any overlaping entries. If the overlap is between ripe delegation file and other one then the part of the overlap is removed from the ripe entry (i.e. the entry in the ripe delegation file is changed to remove the overlap) otherwise if the overlap is between other two registries the first one is changed to remove the overlap. Then 3 delegation files (afrinic, lacnic, and arin) are written to a file.

Ripe and apnic need more processing (this is due to inconsistencies in their DBs), the following procedure is applied for both: The program will iterate over the delegation file of (for example) ripe, it gets the first entry of the delegation file (lets call that entry X). X contains a range of IPs with no country is assigned to. The country information will be taken from the ripe database. The program will check the database entries if they overlap with entry X and assign the country of the smallest range entries to X (i.e. if two entries in DB with different countries overlap over the same location in X the country of the smaller range will be assigned to X). Then we pick the next entry (X++;) in the delegation file and so on.

The last step is to sort the file that contain the delegation files and output the result to file called "ip2country.db".

Copyright/ License/ Credits