Geolocation Update - IP Location in Ireland

On Saturday 8th March I gave a talk at Creativecamp Kilkenny on Geolocation. As my slides were mostly screengrabs of webpages, putting them up for viewing would be meaningless. So this article is a review of the current situation regarding geolocation in Ireland.

Current market:

Eircom are the largest provider of home Internet connections. There are 793,600 Broadband subscribers (Q3 2007 – Comreg) of which 507,000 are DSL (via phone line). There are 383 000 dialup subscribers. Eircom have 57% of the Internet connection market. The other three significant providers are Irish Broadband 8%, BT (Esat/IOL) 7% and Perlico 6%. The Dublin market is significantly different – Eircom have 40% and Irish Broadband have 17% of the market.

Each company has a different means of allocating IP numbers.

Eircom

Eircom use IP allocation for dialup that is geolocation friendly. Typical IP numbers show as follows under reverse DNS.

159-134-50-103.as1.clm.clonmel.eircom.net

159-134-210-40.as1.csy.castleblaney.eircom.net

213-94-134-94.as1.wxd.wexford.eircom.net

159-134-156-172.as1.twv.tralee.eircom.net

159-134-52-22.as1.mlw.mallow.eircom.net

When it comes to broadband connections, the situation is less precise, as can be seen from the following Eircom map

Because Eircom use Regional rather than local POPs for ADSL connections, anywhere outside of Dublin has less precise geolocation than is available through declining dialup connections.

It does seem however that the situation is evolving so there might be hope for further development. During 2007 for example, my home connection in Tramore Co. Waterford was typically as follows

86-45-154-89.b-ras2.chf.cork.eircom.net


In February this year the situation changed and I appeared as a Waterford POP connection.

86-46-101-158.b-ras1.wtd.waterford.eircom.net

While this works well for me, it seems from the map that everyone in Wicklow, Wexford, carlow and South Tipp will be tagged as 'Waterford' if using Eircom Broadband.

Other ISPs

My research indicates that most of the other ISPs allocate IP number from one central resource and therefore appear to be based in Dublin. However, Digiweb users appear to be based in Louth (except for Metro users). For NTL customers, things look brighter. I have consistently found visitors to my website with NTL Ips show up as Waterford.

Does this matter?

For the most part, geolocation is concerned with finding out which country a website visitor lives in. Given Ireland's small size and population, this is hardly surprising. However, Google, with their powerful adwords system offer geographic based advertising within Ireland.

This system works on the IP number of the person searching on Google. Input a search term, and advertisements target at your county will be shown. Fine and dandy in theory, but if the database for IP numbers is highly inaccurate, then it just doesn't stack up.

Advertising locally

I started using Google adwords in 2007. I wanted my ads shown in Waterford, Kilkenny and Wexford. But I quickly discovered that I had to target Cork and Dublin for my ads to be seen and responded to. When by IP changed to .wtd.waterford.eircom htings improved. I could at least drop Cork from my list.

An interesting addition to Google adwords is an indication that your advertiser is local, provided the advertiser has targeted their ads by local (as opposed to national) area.

The search on the right, which I did in early March from Tramore brought up this advert from a Cork solicitor. Note the 'Waterford' at the bottom. This indicates to the searcher that the advertiser is targeting their area.

This does show promise, but a week after doing that search, I did it again, and the same solicitor showed up as 'Wexford'. I also found that my own ads, which are firmly targeted at Waterford were showing up on Google with 'Wexford'.

Naturally I checked my reverse IP, but it hadn't changed. Somehow, somewhere somebody made a change to the database that Google use and I had moved county again.


Footnote: As of March 20th, I'm now in Carlow (if you get my drift!)

Footnote2: As of April 29th, I'm now in Kilkenny!