GeoIP2 Release Notes - 2014 Archive

More IPs mapped to postal codes

As part of our ongoing work to return more data, MaxMind has increased the number of IP addresses that map to a postal code.

An ISP may allocate an IP range over multiple postal codes. In such cases, MaxMind cannot accurately determine the exact postal code associated with an IP address in that range. Previously we only included a postal code if we were confident of the resolution. Now, we include more postal codes, returning a postal code within a 50km radius.

We are doing this as a convenience to our customers who want to use the postal code instead of the city to link to other data.

In addition, we've added Poland and Portugal to the list of countries for which we return postal codes. The full list of countries for which we provide postal codes now includes the following:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, India, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States.

Improvements to accuracy in Japan, South Korea and Venezuela and change in lat/lon returned

We have improved the coverage and accuracy for GeoIP City in Japan, South Korea and Venezuela. We expect to make further improvements to the accuracy in South Korea over the next few weeks.

If we are unable to determine the city or region for IP addresses in Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Spain, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Iran, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, we will return a latitude and longitude of the largest city in the country.

Free JavaScript service discontinued

We have disabled the free JavaScript GeoIP service.

If you were using the free JavaScript service and wish to continue service, you must purchase GeoIP2 web service queries and either upgrade to the GeoIP2 JavaScript API or change the URL called to that provided by the GeoIP Legacy JavaScript service.

Upgrading to the GeoIP2 JavaScript API comes with several benefits:

• MaxMind’s most accurate IP geolocation data – GeoIP2 web service data accurately geolocates 5% more IPs to postal codes and 3% more IPs to cities than GeoIP Legacy data
• Location names in eight popular languages
• Support for IPv6 addresses

GeoIP2 JavaScript v2.1

MaxMind released version 2.1 of our JavaScript API. Changes:

• This release updates the API to use version 2.1 of our GeoIP2 web service.
• The omni() method has been replaced with the insights() method.
• The cityISPOrg() has been removed.
• The city() method now returns ASN, ISP, and organization data.
• As noted in the web service release notes, several fields that were incorrectly strings in version 2.0 of the web service have been changed to be numeric.

To upgrade, please use the new JavaScript file specified in our developer documentation.

Users of version 2.0 are not affected, but they are encouraged to update to the new version. Only serious functionality issues will be fixed in version 2.0.

GeoIP2 Web Service v2.1

MaxMind has released version 2.1 of the GeoIP2 web service. Changes include:

• The Omni endpoint was renamed Insights. The path for this endpoint has changed accordingly.
• The City/ISP/Org endpoint was removed. The City endpoint now returns all of the data previously returned by City/ISP/Org.
• In v2.0, accuracy_radius, autonomous_system_number, and all of the confidence values were incorrectly returned as strings. These are now returned as integers.

To upgrade, please use the updated service URIs specified in our developer documentation.

For the version 2.0 endpoints, the City endpoint will now include ISP/Org data. The other output for the 2.0 endpoints was unchanged.

Type Change to GeoIP2 Metro Code Field

In previous GeoIP2 databases, the metro_code was incorrectly represented as a string. This has been corrected and now metro_code is internally represented as an uint16. This should not affect users of the official Java, .NET, Perl, or PHP GeoIP2 APIs. The Python API will now return an integer rather than a string for metro_code. Users of libmaxminddb or third-party APIs may be affected.

Free use of the GeoIP2 JavaScript API has been discontinued

In order to focus our efforts on providing the best IP data to our customers, MaxMind has discontinued free use of the GeoIP2 JavaScript API. To continue using the API, you will need to purchase GeoIP2 Web Service lookups. Individuals unable to purchase services are encouraged to use our free GeoLite2 Country or City databases.