Smartphone-based geolocation of Internet hosts

TL;DR

This paper explores a novel crowdsourcing approach to IP geolocation using smartphones as landmarks, leveraging delay measurements to improve location accuracy in wireless environments.

Contribution

It introduces a new measurement-based IP geolocation method utilizing smartphones as landmarks and develops a delay-distance model specific to wireless connections.

Findings

Effective use of smartphones as landmarks for geolocation

A new delay-distance model for wireless connections

Potential improvements in IP location accuracy

Abstract

The location of Internet hosts is frequently used in distributed applications and networking services. Examples include customized advertising, distribution of content, and position-based security. Unfortunately the relationship between an IP address and its position is in general very weak. This motivates the study of measurement-based IP geolocation techniques, where the position of the target host is actively estimated using the delays between a number of landmarks and the target itself. This paper discusses an IP geolocation method based on crowdsourcing where the smartphones of users operate as landmarks. Since smartphones rely on wireless connections, a specific delay-distance model was derived to capture the characteristics of this novel operating scenario.