GeoIP Release Notes

MaxMind will be adding accuracy radius to the GeoLite2 City and GeoIP2 City databases as well as the GeoIP2 City Plus web service.

The Accuracy Radius is an indication in kilometers of geolocation accuracy for the latitude and longitude coordinates we return for an IP address. The actual location of the IP address is likely within the area defined by this radius and the latitude and longitude coordinates.

As a reminder, the latitude and longitude coordinates we return for a given IP address are near either the population or geographic center of the most granular location data we return for that IP address (i.e., country, region/state, city, or postal code) and should not be used to identify a particular address or household.

For the binary databases and web service, this field will be available at /location/accuracy_radius. All official GeoIP2 client APIs already support this field.

For the CSV databases, a new accuracy_radius column will be added to the end of the IPv4 and IPv6 blocks files. Please test your integration to ensure compatibility before updating. You may test your integration by downloading the latest copy of the GeoLite2 CSV database, which already has the accuracy_radius column appended.

Target availability dates:

• GeoLite2 City – May 3, 2016
• GeoIP2 City – May 17, 2016
• GeoIP2 City Plus – May 19, 2016

We are changing the latitude and longitude for two locations in our GeoIP and GeoLite databases. For IPs in the United States that we are unable to locate to a particular state or city, we will return 37.751, -97.822. For IPs that resolve to Ashburn, Virginia with zip code 20147, we will return 39.018, -77.539. We would like to remind customers that latitude and longitude values contained in the GeoIP databases are not precise and should not be used to identify a particular address or household.

We are updating the GeoIP ISP and Organization databases to return Verizon Fios instead of Verizon FiOS, due to a change in how Verizon capitalizes Fios. If you reference Verizon FiOS in code or a custom rule, note that you may need to revise these references to Verizon Fios.

MaxMind has released libmaxminddb 1.1.2, which includes a number of important security fixes. Among these fixes is improved validation of the database metadata. Unfortunately, MaxMind GeoIP2 and GeoLite2 databases created earlier than January 28, 2014, had an invalid data type for the record_size in the metadata. Previously these databases worked on little endian machines with libmaxminddb but did not work on big endian machines. Due to increased safety checks when reading the file, these databases will no longer work on any platform. If you are using one of these databases, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest GeoLite2 or GeoIP2 database.

We are updating the GeoIP ISP and Organization databases today to return AT&T Internet Services instead of BellSouth.net, due to a merger with AT&T. We are renaming Bouygues Telecom Division Mobile to Bouygues Mobile. There is also a bug fix to return Frontier Communications instead of AT&T Wireless for Frontier customers in Connecticut.

is_anonymous_proxy and is_satellite_provider are now deprecated in GeoIP2.

Use the GeoIP2 Anonymous IP Database to identify anonymous IPs and refer to the IP Risk Score to assess whether an IP address is high risk.

Due to the increased coverage by mobile carriers, very few satellite providers now serve multiple countries. As a result, the is_satellite_provider output does not provide sufficiently relevant data for us to maintain it.

GeoIP2 Insights web service now offers average_income and population_density fields within the location response. average_income represents the weighted average income in US dollars per person for the zip code(s) associated with the IP address. population_density represents the weighted population per square kilometer for the zip code(s) associated with the IP address. Note that these fields are returned for IP addresses located in the US only. These new fields are documented in the GeoIP2 web services API documentation.

We’ve released the GeoIP2 Anonymous IP, ISP, Domain and Connection Type databases in CSV format. All GeoIP2 databases are now available in this format.

We’ve enhanced the GeoIP2 City Plus and GeoIP2 Insights web services to identify the organization associated with a business IP address in 10% more instances.

We are working on improving the accuracy in Crimea.

Approximately 60% of website visitors who are from Crimea are currently located by GeoIP as being in Crimea. We plan to increase this to 75% in the next couple of months.

Approximately 95% of the visitors who are located in Crimea by GeoIP are actually in Crimea.

We currently locate Crimea in Ukraine, as we use GeoNames data and they locate Crimea in Ukraine. If GeoNames locates Crimea in Russia in the future, we will follow their change and post an announcement here as well as on https://twitter.com/maxmind

In legacy GeoIP, we return a FIPS region code of 11 or 20. In GeoIP2, we return an ISO code of 40 or 43 in the subdivision object.

Due to the nature of geolocation technology and other factors beyond our control, we cannot guarantee any specific future accuracy level. Further, accuracy figures are subject to change as IP networks are reallocated.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Canadian postal codes are included in the GeoIP City databases again. We now return the first 3 characters of the postal for Canada. We have also increased postal coverage for Australia, France, Spain, and Switzerland

The postal code coverage is approximately:

• Australia, 22%
• Canada, 25%
• France, 39%
• Germany, 14%
• Italy, 19%
• Spain, 20%
• South Africa, 5%
• Switzerland, 38%
• United Kingdom, 9%
• United States, 56%

The Tuesday, August 6, GeoIP update is delayed one day. The databases should be available by 6pm US Eastern time on Wednesday, August 7th. We apologize for the delay.

GeoIP databases now return more postal codes for Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, and United Kingdom. In addition, the latitude and longitude will reflect the center of the postal code instead of the center of the city for these countries. The postal code coverage is approximately:

• Australia, 20%
• France, 23%
• Germany, 14%
• Italy, 18%
• Spain, 11%
• South Africa, 5%
• Switzerland, 28%
• United Kingdom, 9%
• United States, 56%

On July 30th, the GeoIP databases should return postals for Canada.

The GeoLite2 City database is now available for download. This is the first database available in our new MaxMind DB format.

The GeoIP2 Web Services now use more accurate GeoIP2 precision data. Testing shows the GeoIP2 precision data accurately geolocates 1.6% more IPs to US postal codes than GeoIP Legacy data. GeoIP2 precision data is available only in GeoIP2 City/ISP/Organization and GeoIP Omni Web Services.

The GeoIP2 JavaScript service is now available. This is the first publicly available GeoIP2-based service.