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Does anybody know of a good way (free or paid) to determine if an incoming IP is from a mobile carrier?
There was a previous question on this: API to determine cell carrier?
and the answer was "use an ISP database and match names". I guess I'm hoping that in the year and a half since this question was asked somebody came up with something cleaner?
fingers crossed
877
Starting with the simplest way to find someone's IP address is to use one of the many IP lookup tools available online. Resources such as WhatIsMyIPAddress.com or WhatIsMyIP.com offer tools to enter an IP address and search for its free public registry results.
IP addresses identify where data originates from and where it should be sent towards. IP addresses can either be static or dynamic. A static IP address is one that is assigned to a network-connected device that needs to have a permanently assigned address (e.g., a server, firewall or router).
Your local IP (Internet Protocol) address is the unique internet location of your home computer network, or the unique local address of your work computer. Unless you use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) when you access the internet at home, your IP address remains public.
I have a mobile web site and I needed to do IP geo-location. I had a look at several IP->Location databases. One of which was MaxMind. They have a free database which provides city level accuracy, but they also have a paid for database (for a pretty reasonable fee) that gives you more detail, including what mobile carrier a mobile user is coming in on.
Go to http://www.maxmind.com and put your IP into the demo entry box (its on front page), and you'll see the detail you can get. This is the API you would need from them: http://www.maxmind.com/app/isp
Like I say, I only use the city level detail database so can't vouch for the coverage of the mobile carriers. But during my initial tests, it did always seem to return good values for the UK, Ireland, and Asian mobiles I tested.
Rgds, Kevin.
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