SO503 Spring 2010

Web Log Geography Lab

We will look at the geography of web logs.  You will turn in a single DBF file with your results, and a KMZ file.

Download the ZIP file with the lab, and unzip it.  You will have:

• An Excel spreadsheet with your assignments.
• 11 files with IP addresses (you have an assigned file number).

You will turn in a single CSV file with LAT, LONG, and IP.

Insure that you update the program and help file for MICRODEM.  In the table of contents, look up the GIS lab on Mapping IP addresses.

To get your IP address on the WAN, connect to http://www.whatismyip.com/

If you use the DOS command IPCONFIG, and you are behind a router, you will probably get the LAN address, which will be something like 192.168.1.1, and which is not useful outside your LAN.

Each student will get a file with some of the downloads of the MICRODEM installation program during February 2010.  We will plot them, and try to get a sense of the geographic patterns for usage of MICRODEM.  This file was created from the USNA server logs, and contains all the unique IP addresses that requested the installation program during each day of the month. 

Look it up

• http://www.zonums.com/iptools/ipmapper.php will do 50 at a time, put the results on a Google Maps display, and allow export in a number of format (as a least common denominator, you want KML since the others will all have problems with inconsistent treatment of the place names, which we will forgo).
• Alternatives:
  • http://www.whatismyip.com/tools/IP-Address-Lookup.asp I get that it is a Verizon account in Baltimore, ZIP 2120, with a Lat/long in the middle of Baltimore (which gives some indication of how precise this will be).
  • http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation I get that it is in Columbia, MD, and a lat/long there.
  • http://www.ip2location.com/  allows multiple lookups at once
• All of these may limit the number of searches you can do in one session
• A number of other commercial sites will do this, but most are trying to get money (for instance, so you could tailor a web site's content based on where the person was from).

You should be able to open your assigned file in Excel, and then enter the IP addresses into the IP address lookup program in batches of 50 (or less).  We want to combine into a single file with columns for LAT, LONG, and IP.