The bottom line is IP addresses are not reliable as a geographic location. I'm in Seattle (maybe) and could have posted this post from dozens of different IP addresses around the planet (just like all of you).
If IP addresses were accurate to a location we would not need GPS. We'd just all make sure our phones/laptops/pcs have data plans/net access and our IP address would tell us exactly where we are, right?
As for when they are/are not accurate, It's the opposite in many cases....
External Public IP Addresses in large corporate WANs can be pointing back to thousands of computers within the organization (anywhere on the planet), or millions of PC's that are connected via VPN to this corporate WAN.
Public IP addresses for smalltime users who DHCP (cable, dsl, dial-up) could be identified if there's DHCP leases with their MAC address of their cable/dsl modem in the ISPs records (I'm sure RIAA investigators can "create" these records if the ISP admin forgot to turn on logging).
Slashdot Mirror
agreed on every point
My g1 thinks that all SMS messages sent yesterday (12/32/08) were sent on 12-31-2009
The bottom line is IP addresses are not reliable as a geographic location. I'm in Seattle (maybe) and could have posted this post from dozens of different IP addresses around the planet (just like all of you).
If IP addresses were accurate to a location we would not need GPS. We'd just all make sure our phones/laptops/pcs have data plans/net access and our IP address would tell us exactly where we are, right?
As for when they are/are not accurate, It's the opposite in many cases....
External Public IP Addresses in large corporate WANs can be pointing back to thousands of computers within the organization (anywhere on the planet), or millions of PC's that are connected via VPN to this corporate WAN.
Public IP addresses for smalltime users who DHCP (cable, dsl, dial-up) could be identified if there's DHCP leases with their MAC address of their cable/dsl modem in the ISPs records (I'm sure RIAA investigators can "create" these records if the ISP admin forgot to turn on logging).