Identifying country by IP address - geolocation

Question

Is there a way to figure out the country name just by looking at an IP address? I mean, do countries have specific ranges of IP addresses? For example, Australia can have IP addresses only in the range of 123.45.56.89 - 231.54.65.98 (just an example)

Answer 1

No you can't - IP addresses get reallocated and reassigned from time to time, so the mapping of IP to location will also change over time.
If you want to find out the location that an IP address currently maps to you can either download a geolocation database, such as GeoLite from MaxMind, or use an API like http://ipinfo.io (my own service) which will also give you additional details:
$ curl ipinfo.io/8.8.8.8
{
"ip": "8.8.8.8",
"hostname": "google-public-dns-a.google.com",
"loc": "37.385999999999996,-122.0838",
"org": "AS15169 Google Inc.",
"city": "Mountain View",
"region": "California",
"country": "US",
"phone": 650
}

Answer 2

I think what you're looking for is an IP Geolocation database or service provider. There are many out there and some are free (get what you pay for).
Although I haven't used this service before, it claims to be in real-time: https://www.kickfire.com
Here's another IP geo location API from Abstract API - https://www.abstractapi.com/ip-geolocation-api
But just do a google search on IP geo and you'll get more results than you need.

Answer 3

I know that it is a very old post but for the sake of the users who are landed here and looking for a solution, if you are using Cloudflare as your DNS then you can activate IP geolocation and get the value from the request header,
Here is the code snippet in C# after you enable IP geolocation in Cloudflare through the network tab
var countryCode = HttpContext.Request.Headers.Get("cf-ipcountry"); // in older asp.net versions like webform use HttpContext.Current.Request. ...
var countryName = new RegionInfo(CountryCode)?.EnglishName;
You can simply map it to other programming languages, please take a look at the Cloudflare's documentation here
But if you are really insisting on using a 3rd party solution to have more precise information about the visitors using their IP here is a complete, ready to use implementation using C#:
The 3rd party I have used is https://ipstack.com, you can simply register for a free plan and get an access token to use for 100 API requests each month, I am using the JSON model to retrieve and like to convert all the info the API gives me, here we go:
The DTO:
using System;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
public partial class GeoLocationModel
{
[JsonProperty("ip")]
public string Ip { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("hostname")]
public string Hostname { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("type")]
public string Type { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("continent_code")]
public string ContinentCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("continent_name")]
public string ContinentName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_code")]
public string CountryCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_name")]
public string CountryName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("region_code")]
public string RegionCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("region_name")]
public string RegionName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("city")]
public string City { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("zip")]
public long Zip { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("latitude")]
public double Latitude { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("longitude")]
public double Longitude { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("location")]
public Location Location { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("time_zone")]
public TimeZone TimeZone { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("currency")]
public Currency Currency { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("connection")]
public Connection Connection { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("security")]
public Security Security { get; set; }
}
public partial class Connection
{
[JsonProperty("asn")]
public long Asn { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("isp")]
public string Isp { get; set; }
}
public partial class Currency
{
[JsonProperty("code")]
public string Code { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("plural")]
public string Plural { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("symbol")]
public string Symbol { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("symbol_native")]
public string SymbolNative { get; set; }
}
public partial class Location
{
[JsonProperty("geoname_id")]
public long GeonameId { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("capital")]
public string Capital { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("languages")]
public Language[] Languages { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_flag")]
public Uri CountryFlag { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_flag_emoji")]
public string CountryFlagEmoji { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("country_flag_emoji_unicode")]
public string CountryFlagEmojiUnicode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("calling_code")]
public long CallingCode { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_eu")]
public bool IsEu { get; set; }
}
public partial class Language
{
[JsonProperty("code")]
public string Code { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("name")]
public string Name { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("native")]
public string Native { get; set; }
}
public partial class Security
{
[JsonProperty("is_proxy")]
public bool IsProxy { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("proxy_type")]
public object ProxyType { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_crawler")]
public bool IsCrawler { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("crawler_name")]
public object CrawlerName { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("crawler_type")]
public object CrawlerType { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_tor")]
public bool IsTor { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("threat_level")]
public string ThreatLevel { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("threat_types")]
public object ThreatTypes { get; set; }
}
public partial class TimeZone
{
[JsonProperty("id")]
public string Id { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("current_time")]
public DateTimeOffset CurrentTime { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("gmt_offset")]
public long GmtOffset { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("code")]
public string Code { get; set; }
[JsonProperty("is_daylight_saving")]
public bool IsDaylightSaving { get; set; }
}
The Helper:
using System.Configuration;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
public class GeoLocationHelper
{
public static async Task<GeoLocationModel> GetGeoLocationByIp(string ipAddress)
{
var request = WebRequest.Create(string.Format("http://api.ipstack.com/{0}?access_key={1}", ipAddress, ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ipStackAccessKey"]));
var response = await request.GetResponseAsync();
using (var stream = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
var jsonGeoData = await stream.ReadToEndAsync();
return Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<GeoLocationModel>(jsonGeoData);
}
}
}

Answer 4

IP addresses are quite commonly used for geo-targeting i.e. customizing the content of a website by the visitor's location / country but they are not permanently associated with a country and often get re-assigned.
To accomplish what you want, you need to keep an up to date lookup to map an IP address to a country either with a database or a geolocation API. Here's an example :
> https://ipapi.co/8.8.8.8/country
US
> https://ipapi.co/8.8.8.8/country_name
United States
Or you can use the full API to get complete location for IP address e.g.
https://ipapi.co/8.8.8.8/json
{
"ip": "8.8.8.8",
"city": "Mountain View",
"region": "California",
"region_code": "CA",
"country": "US",
"country_name": "United States",
"continent_code": "NA",
"postal": "94035",
"latitude": 37.386,
"longitude": -122.0838,
"timezone": "America/Los_Angeles",
"utc_offset": "-0800",
"country_calling_code": "+1",
"currency": "USD",
"languages": "en-US,es-US,haw,fr",
"asn": "AS15169",
"org": "Google Inc."
}

Answer 5

You could use ipdata.co to perform the lookup
This answer uses a 'test' API Key that is very limited and only meant for testing a few calls. Signup for your own Free API Key and get up to 1500 requests daily for development.
curl https://api.ipdata.co/23.221.76.66?api-key=test
Ipdata has 10 endpoints globally each able to handle >10,000 requests per second!
Gives
{
"ip": "23.221.76.66",
"city": "Cambridge",
"region": "Massachusetts",
"region_code": "MA",
"country_name": "United States",
"country_code": "US",
"continent_name": "North America",
"continent_code": "NA",
"latitude": 42.3626,
"longitude": -71.0843,
"asn": "AS20940",
"organisation": "Akamai International B.V.",
"postal": "02142",
"calling_code": "1",
"flag": "https://ipdata.co/flags/us.png",
"emoji_flag": "\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8",
"emoji_unicode": "U+1F1FA U+1F1F8",
"is_eu": false,
"languages": [
{
"name": "English",
"native": "English"
}
],
"currency": {
"name": "US Dollar",
"code": "USD",
"symbol": "$",
"native": "$",
"plural": "US dollars"
},
"time_zone": {
"name": "America/New_York",
"abbr": "EDT",
"offset": "-0400",
"is_dst": true,
"current_time": "2018-04-19T06:32:30.690963-04:00"
},
"threat": {
"is_tor": false,
"is_proxy": false,
"is_anonymous": false,
"is_known_attacker": false,
"is_known_abuser": false,
"is_threat": false,
"is_bogon": false
}
}⏎

Answer 6

Yes, countries have specific IP address ranges as you mentioned.
For example, Australia is between 16777216 - 16777471. China is between 16777472 - 16778239. But one country may have multiple ranges. For example, Australia also has this range between 16778240 - 16779263
(These are numerical conversions of IP addresses. It depends whether you use IPv4 or IPv6)
More information about these ranges can be seen here: https://lite.ip2location.com/ip-address-ranges-by-country
We get the ip addresses of our website visitors and sometimes want to make relevant campaign for a specific country. We were using bulk conversion tools but later on decided to define the rules in an Excel file and convert it in the tool. And we have built this Excel template: https://www.someka.net/excel-template/ip-to-country-converter/
Now we use this for our own needs and also sell it. I don't want it to be a sales pitch but for those who are looking for an easy solution can benefit from this.

Answer 7

Amazon's CloudFront content delivery network can now be configured to pass this information through as a header. Given Amazon's size (they're big and stable, not going anywhere) and this is configuration over code (no third-party API to learn or code to maintain), all around believe this to be the best option.
If you do not use AWS CloudFront, I'd look into seeing if your CDN has a similar header option that can be turned on. Usually the large providers are quick to push for feature parity. And if you are not using a CDN, you could put CloudFront in front of your infrastructure and simply set the origin to resolve to whatever you are currently using.
Additionally, it also makes sense to resolve this at the CDN level. Your CDN is already having to figure out geo location to route the user to the nearest content node, might as well pass this information along and not figure it out twice through a third party API (this becomes chokepoint for your app, waiting for a geo location lookup to resolve). No need to do this work twice (and the second time, arguably less resilient [e.g., 3rd party geo lookup]).
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/enhanced-cloudfront-customization/
Geo-Targeting – CloudFront will detect the user’s country of origin
and pass along the county code to you in the CloudFront-Viewer-Country
header. You can use this information to customize your responses
without having to use URLs that are specific to each country.

Answer 8

It's not that easy.
IP adresses are not assigned to countries as such, but to companies and organizations.
But maybe this can help you out: http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry

Answer 9

You can try using https://ip-api.io - geo location api that returns country among other IP information.
For example with Node.js
const request = require('request-promise')
request('http://ip-api.io/api/json/1.2.3.4')
.then(response => console.log(JSON.parse(response)))
.catch(err => console.log(err))

Answer 10

May be these two links can help you Associate IP addresses with countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Internet_Registry

Answer 11

I agree with above answers, the best way to get country from ip address is Maxmind.
If you want to write code in java, you might want to use i.e. geoip-api-1.2.10.jar and geoIP dat files (GeoIPCity.dat), which can be found via google.
Following code may be useful for you to get almost all information related to location, I am also using the same code.
public static String getGeoDetailsUsingMaxmind(String ipAddress, String desiredValue)
{
Location getLocation;
String returnString = "";
try
{
String geoIPCity_datFile = System.getenv("AUTOMATION_HOME").concat("/tpt/GeoIP/GeoIPCity.dat");
LookupService isp = new LookupService(geoIPCity_datFile);
getLocation = isp.getLocation(ipAddress);
isp.close();
//Getting all location details
if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("latitude") || desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("lat"))
{
returnString = String.valueOf(getLocation.latitude);
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("longitude") || desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("lon"))
{
returnString = String.valueOf(getLocation.longitude);
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("countrycode") || desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("country"))
{
returnString = getLocation.countryCode;
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("countryname"))
{
returnString = getLocation.countryName;
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("region"))
{
returnString = getLocation.region;
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("metro"))
{
returnString = String.valueOf(getLocation.metro_code);
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("city"))
{
returnString = getLocation.city;
}
else if(desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("zip") || desiredValue.equalsIgnoreCase("postalcode"))
{
returnString = getLocation.postalCode;
}
else
{
returnString = "";
System.out.println("There is no value found for parameter: "+desiredValue);
}
System.out.println("Value of: "+desiredValue + " is: "+returnString + " for ip address: "+ipAddress);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
System.out.println("Exception occured while getting details from max mind. " + e);
}
finally
{
return returnString;
}
}

Answer 12

Yes, you can download the IP address ranges by country from https://lite.ip2location.com/ip-address-ranges-by-country
You can see that each country has multiple ranges and changes frequently.

Answer 13

Here is my solution in Python 3.x to return geo-location info given a dataframe containing IP Address(s); efficient parallelized application of function on vectorized pd.series/dataframe is the way to go.
Will contrast performance of two popular libraries to return location.
TLDR: use geolite2 method.
1. geolite2 package from geolite2 library
Input
# !pip install maxminddb-geolite2
import time
from geolite2 import geolite2
geo = geolite2.reader()
df_1 = train_data.loc[:50,['IP_Address']]
def IP_info_1(ip):
try:
x = geo.get(ip)
except ValueError: #Faulty IP value
return np.nan
try:
return x['country']['names']['en'] if x is not None else np.nan
except KeyError: #Faulty Key value
return np.nan
s_time = time.time()
# map IP --> country
#apply(fn) applies fn. on all pd.series elements
df_1['country'] = df_1.loc[:,'IP_Address'].apply(IP_info_1)
print(df_1.head(), '\n')
print('Time:',str(time.time()-s_time)+'s \n')
print(type(geo.get('48.151.136.76')))
Output
IP_Address country
0 48.151.136.76 United States
1 94.9.145.169 United Kingdom
2 58.94.157.121 Japan
3 193.187.41.186 Austria
4 125.96.20.172 China
Time: 0.09906983375549316s
<class 'dict'>
2. DbIpCity package from ip2geotools library
Input
# !pip install ip2geotools
import time
s_time = time.time()
from ip2geotools.databases.noncommercial import DbIpCity
df_2 = train_data.loc[:50,['IP_Address']]
def IP_info_2(ip):
try:
return DbIpCity.get(ip, api_key = 'free').country
except:
return np.nan
df_2['country'] = df_2.loc[:, 'IP_Address'].apply(IP_info_2)
print(df_2.head())
print('Time:',str(time.time()-s_time)+'s')
print(type(DbIpCity.get('48.151.136.76',api_key = 'free')))
Output
IP_Address country
0 48.151.136.76 US
1 94.9.145.169 GB
2 58.94.157.121 JP
3 193.187.41.186 AT
4 125.96.20.172 CN
Time: 80.53318452835083s
<class 'ip2geotools.models.IpLocation'>
A reason why the huge time difference could be due to the Data structure of the output, i.e direct subsetting from dictionaries seems way more efficient than indexing from the specicialized ip2geotools.models.IpLocation object.
Also, the output of the 1st method is dictionary containing geo-location data, subset respecitively to obtain needed info:
x = geolite2.reader().get('48.151.136.76')
print(x)
>>>
{'city': {'geoname_id': 5101798, 'names': {'de': 'Newark', 'en': 'Newark', 'es': 'Newark', 'fr': 'Newark', 'ja': 'ニューアーク', 'pt-BR': 'Newark', 'ru': 'Ньюарк'}},
'continent': {'code': 'NA', 'geoname_id': 6255149, 'names': {'de': 'Nordamerika', 'en': 'North America', 'es': 'Norteamérica', 'fr': 'Amérique du Nord', 'ja': '北アメリカ', 'pt-BR': 'América do Norte', 'ru': 'Северная Америка', 'zh-CN': '北美洲'}},
'country': {'geoname_id': 6252001, 'iso_code': 'US', 'names': {'de': 'USA', 'en': 'United States', 'es': 'Estados Unidos', 'fr': 'États-Unis', 'ja': 'アメリカ合衆国', 'pt-BR': 'Estados Unidos', 'ru': 'США', 'zh-CN': '美国'}},
'location': {'accuracy_radius': 1000, 'latitude': 40.7355, 'longitude': -74.1741, 'metro_code': 501, 'time_zone': 'America/New_York'},
'postal': {'code': '07102'},
'registered_country': {'geoname_id': 6252001, 'iso_code': 'US', 'names': {'de': 'USA', 'en': 'United States', 'es': 'Estados Unidos', 'fr': 'États-Unis', 'ja': 'アメリカ合衆国', 'pt-BR': 'Estados Unidos', 'ru': 'США', 'zh-CN': '美国'}},
'subdivisions': [{'geoname_id': 5101760, 'iso_code': 'NJ', 'names': {'en': 'New Jersey', 'es': 'Nueva Jersey', 'fr': 'New Jersey', 'ja': 'ニュージャージー州', 'pt-BR': 'Nova Jérsia', 'ru': 'Нью-Джерси', 'zh-CN': '新泽西州'}}]}