IP::Country(3)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					    IP::Country(3)

NAME

       IP::Country - fast lookup of country codes from IP addresses

SYNOPSIS

	 use IP::Country::Fast;
	 my $reg = IP::Country::Fast->new();
	 print $reg->inet_atocc('212.67.197.128')   ."
";
	 print $reg->inet_atocc('www.slashdot.org') ."
";
	 print $reg->db_time() ."
"; # revision date

DESCRIPTION

       Finding the home country of a client using only the IP address can be difficult.  Looking up the domain name associated with that address
       can provide some help, but many IP address are not reverse mapped to any useful domain, and the most common domain (.com) offers no help
       when looking for country.

       This module comes bundled with a database of countries where various IP addresses have been assigned. Although the country of assignment
       will probably be the country associated with a large ISP rather than the client herself, this is probably good enough for most log analysis
       applications, and under test has proved to be as accurate as reverse-DNS and WHOIS lookup.

CONSTRUCTOR

       The constructor takes no arguments.

	 use IP::Country::Fast;
	 my $reg = IP::Country::Fast->new();

OBJECT METHODS

       All object methods are designed to be used in an object-oriented fashion.

	 $result = $object->foo_method($bar,$baz);

       Using the module in a procedural fashion (without the arrow syntax) won't work.

       $cc = $reg->inet_atocc(HOSTNAME)
	   Takes a string giving the name of a host, and translates that to an two-letter country code. Takes arguments of both the 'rtfm.mit.edu'
	   type and '18.181.0.24'. If the host name cannot be resolved, returns undef.	If the resolved IP address is not contained within the
	   database, returns undef.  For multi-homed hosts (hosts with more than one address), the first address found is returned. For private
	   Internet addresses (see RFC1918), returns two asterisks '**'.

       $cc = $reg->inet_ntocc(IP_ADDRESS)
	   Takes a string (an opaque string as returned by Socket::inet_aton()) and translates it into a two-letter country code. If the IP
	   address is not contained within the database, returns undef.

       $cc = $reg->db_time()
	   Returns the creation date of the database, measured as number of seconds since the Unix epoch (00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970). Suitable
	   for feeding to "gmtime" and "localtime". When used with IP::Country::Medium or Slow objects, returns zero.

PERFORMANCE

       With a random selection of 65,000 IP addresses, the module can look up over 15,000 IP addresses per second on a 730MHz PIII (Coppermine)
       and over 25,000 IP addresses per second on a 1.3GHz Athlon. Out of this random selection of IP addresses, 43% had an associated country
       code. Please let me know if you've run this against a set of 'real' IP addresses from your log files, and have details of the proportion of
       IPs that had associated country codes.

IP
::Country::Slow warning
       During tests of this module, it was found that there was no measurable advantage in using this module in preference to IP::Country::Medium
       or IP::Country::Fast. You should use IP::Country::Medium is the majority of your lookups are of the form 'rtfm.mit.edu' (domain names), and
       IP::Country::Fast if the majority of your lookups are of the form '18.181.0.24' (IP addresses).

       IP::Country::Medium caches domain-name lookups, whereas IP::Country::Fast does not.

       It is *very* rare for a domain-name lookup to differ from the database used by IP::Country::Fast. Thus, there is no good reason to prefer a
       slow domain-name lookup to a fast database lookup. Nor is there any significant difference in coverage between the domain-name system and
       database. If you can find a real reason to use IP::Country::Slow, let me know.

COUNTRY CODES

       You'll probably want some kind of country code -> country name conversion utility: you should use Geography::Countries from CPAN.

       However, you should note the circumstances where the country code returned by IP::Country will deviate from those used by
       Geography::Countries:

	 AP - non-specific Asia-Pacific location
	 CS - Czechoslovakia (former)
	 EU - non-specific European Union location
	 FX - France, Metropolitan
	 PS - Palestinian Territory, Occupied
	 ** - intranet address
	 undef - not in database

BUGS
/LIMITATIONS
       Only works with IPv4 addresses and ASCII hostnames.

SEE ALSO

       IP::Country::Fast - recommended for lookups of hostnames which are mostly in the dotted-quad form ('213.45.67.89').

       IP::Country::Medium - recommended for lookups of hostnames which are mostly in the domain-name form ('www.yahoo.com'). Caches domain-name
       lookups.

       IP::Country::Slow - NOT RECOMMENDED. Only included for completeness. Prefers domain-name lookups to database lookups, which is an expensive
       strategy of no benefit.

       Geo::IP - wrapper around the geoip C libraries. Less portable. Not measurably faster than these native Perl modules. Paid subscription
       required for database updates.

       <http://www.apnic.net> - Asia pacific

       <http://www.ripe.net> - Europe

       <http://www.arin.net> - North America

       <http://www.lacnic.net> - Latin America

       <http://www.afrinic.net> - Africa and Indian Ocean

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Nigel Wetters Gourlay. All Rights Reserved.

       NO WARRANTY. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

       Some parts of this software distribution are derived from the APNIC, LACNIC, ARIN, AFRINIC and RIPE databases (copyright details below).  I
       am not a lawyer, so please direct questions about the RIR's licenses to them, not me.

APNIC conditions of use
       The files are freely available for download and use on the condition that APNIC will not be held responsible for any loss or damage arising
       from the application of the information contained in these reports.

       APNIC endeavours to the best of its ability to ensure the accuracy of these reports; however, APNIC makes no guarantee in this regard.

       In particular, it should be noted that these reports seek to indicate the country where resources were first allocated or assigned. It is
       not intended that these reports be considered as an authoritative statement of the location in which any specific resource may currently be
       in use.

ARIN database copyright
       Copyright (c) American Registry for Internet Numbers. All rights reserved.

       The ARIN WHOIS data is for Internet operational or technical research purposes pertaining to Internet operations only.  It may not be used
       for advertising, direct marketing, marketing research, or similar purposes.  Use of the ARIN WHOIS data for these activities is explicitly
       forbidden.  ARIN requests to be notified of any such activities or suspicions thereof.

RIPE database copyright
       The information in the RIPE Database is available to the public for agreed Internet operation purposes, but is under copyright.	The
       copyright statement is:

       "Except for agreed Internet operational purposes, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
       transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the RIPE NCC on
       behalf of the copyright holders. Any use of this material to target advertising or similar activities is explicitly forbidden and may be
       prosecuted.  The RIPE NCC requests to be notified of any such activities or suspicions thereof."

LACNIC database copyright
       Copyright (c) Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry. All rights reserved.

AFRINIC copyright
       Seems to be the RIPE copyright. I'm sure they'll correct this in due course.

perl v5.12.1							    2009-07-25							    IP::Country(3)