Internet Host Geolocation Using Maximum Likelihood Estimation Technique

Accurately locating the geographical position of Internet hosts has many useful applications. Existing approaches for host geolocation use Internet latency measurements, IP-to-location mapping and also geographical and demographical hints. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) technique for Internet host geolocation. Our approach is based on a probability model for latency measurements that we developed by analyzing a large set of data collected on the PlanetLab network test bed. This approach uses latency measurements from multiple hosts of known location to the host to be geolocated, to estimate the target location. Using both simulated and real data, we analyze the accuracy of our approach. Our results for geolocating Internet hosts in North America confirms the validity of using MLE with certainty as its accuracy is found to be better in comparison to existing techniques that are based on Internet latency.