Channels ▼  Web Development  Geolocation in Perl  brian has been
a Perl user since 1994. He is founder of the first Perl Users
Group,, and Perl Mongers, the Perl advocacy organization. He has
been teaching Perl through Stonehenge Consulting for the past
five years, and has been a featured speaker at The Perl
Conference, Perl University, YAPC, COMDEX, and Contact brian at
Many web server log analyzers now support "geolocation," meaning
that they can turn a host name or IP address into a point on the
globe. With geolocation, instead of looking at a bunch of
numbers, I can look at maps. Using the Geo::IP module and the
databases from MaxMind (http://www, both of which are freely
available, I can add this feature to my programs, too.  Turning
IP addresses into locations is not perfect, but as long as I
understand how IP numbers are assigned and split up, I can put
my geolocation results into perspective. I need to know a little
about how IP numbers are assigned, so I can interpret the
results and judge the accur