need ISP/IP map

June 10, 2006 1:38 PM

Is there a database or service that can take an IP address and return the name of the ISP that owns it?

In order to better understand Net Neutrality, I may build a tool to gather neutrality statistics from around the internet. The tool would either be a browser plugin or a windows systray icon that pings a few dozen popular websites a few times daily and then sends a digest of the results to a central server.

So far, all of this is simple enough, but I need some way to take the IP Addresses used by people running my tool and resolve them to particular IP addresses.

posted by b1tr0t to computers & internet (16 comments total)

You probably want to be using the ARIN WHOIS database.
posted by HAMFIST at 1:42 PM on June 10, 2006

ping -a + a simple shell script won't cut it?
posted by Ryvar at 1:42 PM on June 10, 2006

here you go
posted by delmoi at 1:52 PM on June 10, 2006

Ryvar - that would work for one person - my plan is to publish the tool and get thousands of people to run it. That way, I'd have a useful database of internet connectivity.
posted by b1tr0t at 2:17 PM on June 10, 2006

ARIN only resolves some addresses. Others require reference to other regional authorities:

RIPE, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, JAPNIC, AFRINIC
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:22 PM on June 10, 2006

if you're looking for general internet connectivity information, a few recent research efforts that spring to mind are routeviews and skitter. there also might be some papers appearing in sigcomm 2006 that could probably pique your interest. several leading internet research types aren't exactly big proponents of net neutrality, so rest assured that if/when it is implemented, there will be a few research efforts to determine its effect on the internet at large.
posted by kaytwo at 2:35 PM on June 10, 2006

Also a great site: http://www.dnsstuff.com/
posted by jimmy0x52 at 3:27 PM on June 10, 2006

my plan is to publish the tool and get thousands of people to run it. That way, I'd have a useful database of internet connectivity.

Could you explain what you meant by that? I'm scratching my head.

I use Sam Spade for lookup stuff like that.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:52 PM on June 10, 2006

I'm confused too. The database already exists (and yours will already be less complete) as well as the downloadable tool (Sam Spade). Is there something I'm missing?
posted by winston at 4:31 PM on June 10, 2006

Sam spade looks like it is useful for finding out what sort of connectivity I have at my site. I'm more interested in understanding what sort of connectivity exists across the internet.

To understand how evenly connected the internet is, I need a large number of people to gather statistics about their local connectivity, and forward that data to a central location. The subject of this AskMe only relates to turning some of the numeric data into a more useful symbolic form - I have no intention of publishing DNS information.
posted by b1tr0t at 6:22 PM on June 10, 2006

You might be interested in some of the IP to location services. See the previous askme
posted by Sharcho at 6:42 PM on June 10, 2006

Either I still don't get it ("To understand how evenly connected the internet is"? In the US, pretty evenly. In East Timor, not so much.), or what you want has already been done in a much more systematic way by people who have access to the data from whois databases and traffic on the big backbones.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 10:06 PM on June 10, 2006

yeah, but the whois database and backbones are irrelevant. I'm more interested in how connectivity is perceived from various end-users. Does everyone get 100 ms pings to google, msn, and yahoo, or not? Does access depend on intentional decisions, or unintentional design decisions?
posted by b1tr0t at 11:15 PM on June 10, 2006

So you want to map the internet by ping? Or are you trying something more like this?
posted by 999 at 4:21 AM on June 11, 2006

ping is just a starting point. The internet mapping project is definitely an inspiration, but that project is more about the reachability of the internet. I'm more interested in gaining qualitative insight into how reachable major internet sites are by ISP customers. I don't care much about the dark reaches of the internet, I'm more interested to discover whether Comcast customers get faster routes to Google than Yahoo!, for example.
posted by b1tr0t at 3:21 PM on June 11, 2006

OK. I finally get it. I can't help you, but at least I understand the question. I think you should have asked it that way at the start.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 12:58 AM on June 12, 2006