Method and apparatus for identifying locale of internet users
First Claim
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1. A method for determining the network address of a network support device in most direct communication with a computer network accessing computational device, said method including the steps of:
- transmitting a burst of messages having a range of time-to-live (TTL) values, each message including a network address of said computational device and having a copy of its initial time_o-live value embedded as a constant value in the message, whereby response messages generated by the network support devices and said computational device in response to said burst of messages incorporate said initial time-to-live values; and
determining said address of th network support device on the basis of the type of response message received and said incorporated initial time_o-live values.
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Abstract
A method for a web-server host H (11) to determine the network address of a router or other network support device (10) most directly connected to a network connected computational device M such as a PC (12). In a preferred embodiment Host (11) is able to determine the geographical location of router (10), and hence the approximate geographical location of PC (12). The host may transmit information geographically relevant to PC (12) such as advertisements for locally available goods and services.
104 Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method for determining the network address of a network support device in most direct communication with a computer network accessing computational device, said method including the steps of:
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transmitting a burst of messages having a range of time-to-live (TTL) values, each message including a network address of said computational device and having a copy of its initial time_o-live value embedded as a constant value in the message, whereby response messages generated by the network support devices and said computational device in response to said burst of messages incorporate said initial time-to-live values; and
determining said address of th network support device on the basis of the type of response message received and said incorporated initial time_o-live values. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 7)
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6. A method for determining the approximate geographical location of a data network accessible computational device located remotely from a host, said method including the steps of:
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accessing a database relating network support device identity to geographical location;
determining the identity of a network support device appearing in said table most directly connected to said computational device; and
looking up a geographical location in said database related to said determined network support device. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9)
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- 10. A computational device connected to the internet, the computational device including processing means operatively arranged to produce a burst of ICMP data messages having initial time-to-live values stored in a data field of each message, said processing means being further operatively arranged to determine the nearest network device to a given IP address on the basis of ICMP data messages received over the network in response to said burst.
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12. A software product stored upon a computer readable medium for execution by a computer, the software product including:
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message generation instructions for generating modified ICMP messages, said messages including a constant time-to-live (TTL) value and the IP address of a remote computational device;
message transmission instructions for transmitting said modified ICMP messages to said IP address;
message reading instructions for reading response messages received in response to said modified ICMP messages;
address determination instructions for determining the address of a network support device in most direct communication with the remote computational device on the basis of data provided by the message reading instructions.
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Specification