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This is interesting. IP address databases are typically bought and sold for figures in the thousands. This service presumably purchases one or some of these and attempts to make up the cost by providing it on an as-needed basis.

I wonder if there are any additional data sources that can just be bought wholesale and sold in pieces? Think of all the applications that needed very precise IP address data but couldn't afford the whole dataset. They can now exist!

I could also be wrong and this isn't at all the approach this service takes...



> IP address databases are typically bought and sold for figures in the thousands.

And presumably, therefore, issued under licenses that forbid you from starting a query service? I'm pretty sure most of these IP data providers will offer their own on-demand query services


Maxmind's is free to City/Country level, $90/month for a site license. http://www.maxmind.com/en/geolocation_landing


That's for your own use however, the license says:

Access to the data is restricted to employees and contractors of the license holder. With contractors, the license holder is liable should the contractors violate the terms of the agreement.

Data may not be stored in a way that is publicly accessible.

If you wanted to build a public server with that, you would have to use their per-usage API according to their FAQ: http://www.maxmind.com/en/faq#lookuptool


You can also use their free databases http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/ under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License


Correct, but the site isn't following the terms of that license.


This really looks like maxmind city level, so... until we get confirmation from the dev on what db it is, assume this service can disappear at any moment due to license issues.


Maxmind.com to me is the most accurate and best priced. Did my research a few weeks ago.




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