Neustar IP Intelligence identifies geographic and contextual data about a Web visitor’s geographical location – all without invading the user’s privacy.

Geographic Data

Neustar IP Intelligence delivers valuable geographic data attributes, including continent, country, state, city, postal/zip code, latitude/longitude, phone prefix/area code, time zone and DMA (Nielsen Designated Market Area) codes.

Network Characteristics

Sometimes geographic information alone is not enough to accurately determine a user’s location. The underlying Internet topology can cause the user to be far away from the publicly visible IP address representing that user. Neustar IP Intelligence offers network characteristic data attributes to describe the underlying Internet infrastructure which helps to better determine the proximity of the end user to the IP address being geolocated.

IP Routing Type

Neustar created the concept of IP routing type to describe the routing characteristics of an Internet connection. For example, most US Internet traffic accesses the Web via broadband. The remainder includes dial-up or POP connections (including AOL) and multiple other values that can help determine whether the user is in the same location as the IP address would indicate. The power of the IP routing type is that it can detail to what degree a user can be expected to be accessing the Internet from the same location as that of the IP address. For example, if the IP routing type is fixed, as is the case with cable or DSL broadband connections, the user’s location can be determined with considerable precision at the country, state and city level.

Proxies

Much of the risk in IP geolocation implementation is how to handle anomalies such as proxies, anonymous proxies, and AOL users. For most IP addresses, Neustar IP Intelligence supplies the IP routing type, identifies anonymous proxy use and flags AOL users. Some connections can only be geographically pinpointed to a certain level – for example, it is possible to accurately determine what country an AOL user is connecting from, but not from what state or city. Neustar IP Intelligence designates values in certain kinds of IP routing types that highlight the uncertainty of the geolocation of a user connecting to the Internet in this manner. Geolocating this type of connection to the Internet is difficult because anonymous, cache and other proxies can obscure accurate geographic information. Neustar IP Intelligence tracks the use of individual anonymizing proxies around the world and currently has more then 600,000 identified. Identifying anonymizer use is crucial is both regulatory and contractual compliance.

Confidence Factors

Included in every data edition are the basic geographic elements of country, state and city, and for each of these three values, Neustar IP Intelligence assigns a confidence factor. The higher the number, the more evidence is available to accurately determine the location of the user. Neustar’s confidence factors highlight the uncertainties that can impact vital business decisions.

Data Fields

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Data Field	Bronze Edition Benefits
Continent	Neustar IP Intelligence locates our data in the seven continents of Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.
Country	Neustar IP Intelligence supplies the country of origin for the IP connection, identified using both the full country name and the International Standard Organization two letter country codes defined in ISO-3166.
Confidence Factors (CF) Country,State,City	The Internet is a complex, heterogeneous environment, and not all IP addresses can be geolocated with the same level of precision or confidence. Neustar IP Intelligence addresses these problems by computing Confidence Factors (CF), which are calculated based on the precision, completeness, and consistency of the data available to assign a specific geographic location to an IP address range. Confidence Factors are provided for Country, State, and City. Their value ranges from 1to 99. A higher value indicates that the likelihood of a correct location assignment is higher; a lower value indicates the opposite. These values are not percentages. Their intended use is as a relative measure of “confidence” on the correctness of the corresponding location assignment.
Region	Region includes generic regional information (e.g. Northwest) and some country-specific regions (e.g. Northern Ireland). Region information is currently available for the US, UK, Brazil, France and the Philippines.
State	Neustar IP Intelligence provides information for States and Provinces (i.e. the first level administration division) in all countries where they exist.
City	Neustar IP Intelligence locates users to their individual cites and recognizes approximately 150,000 distinct international locations.
Postal code	Postal codes are provided for all of the US, Canada, and the UK, and over 20 other countries.
Time zone	Time zone is provided as a +/- offset from GMT so that you can calculate what time it is in the location provided.
Latitude/Longitude	Latitude and Longitude are provided for applications that need to calculate distance or to eliminate ambiguity among places when comparing current location with past locations where location names may have changed. It can also be used with other attributes, like country, to build a richer picture of the relationship between two locations (e.g. distance may be treated differently depending on whether the two locations are in the same country or not).
Area code	Area codes are provided for the US and Canada for reference purposes.
Designated Market Area (DMA)	Designated Market Areas (DMA’s) are groupings of US counties that are reached by a specific groups of TV stations as specified by Neilson Media Research. DMAs are often used by advertisers to segregate and target specific areas of the country. There are 210 DMA’s in the US.
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)	Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) are geographical boundaries of US counties or towns using the Core-Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) as defined by the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from data gathered by the US Census Bureau. There is extensive demographic information available for these areas, and Neustar IP Intelligence provides them to help our customers understand the demographics of their populations.
Network Characteristics
Connection Type	Users can connect to the Internet in several different ways. Neustar IP Intelligence categorizes connections into the following types: Dial-up, Cable, DSL, Fixed Wireless, Mobile Wireless, Satellite, ISDN, Frame Relay, OCX (Optical Connections, i.e. fiber optics), and TX (leased lines, i.e. T1, T2, T3 and T4).
Line Speed	Based on the connection type, Neustar IP Intelligence indicates the speed of the connection to the Internet into high, medium or low. This information is determined by the Connection Type.
IP Routing Type	The IP Routing Type specifies how the connection is routed through the Internet and can be used to determine how close the user is to the public IP address. For example, a user connecting through a “fixed” connection is likely very close to the connection. A user connecting through a “regional proxy” is likely in the same country as the connection, whereas a user connecting through a “satellite” connection may be anywhere.

Data Field	Silver Edition Includes Bronze Benefits Plus:
Second-Level Domain	Neustar IP Intelligence identifies the second-level domain (SLD) associated with the connection. The SLD is the part of the domain name that precedes the top-level domain. For example, in www.neustar.biz, “neustar” is the second-level domain because it comes before the “.biz”. The SLD can often be used to identify the ISP or organization providing the connection.
Top-Level Domain	Neustar IP Intelligence provides the top-level domain (TLD) associated with the connection. The TLD is the last part of the domain name (e.g. com, net, edu, mil, uk, jp, etc.). The TLD can be used to determine if the IP address is associated with education networks (.edu), the US Department of Defense (.mil), or a specific country like Japan (.jp).
Carrier	The Carrier field provides the name of the organization responsible for the traffic carried on a particular network or set of networks designated as an Autonomous System (AS). This field provides a more human readable representation than the information provided in the Autonomous System Number (ASN) field.
ASN	The Autonomous System Number (ASN) is a globally unique number assigned to a group of networks administered by a single entity such as a Network Service Provider (NSP) or very large organization. Using the ASN provides more consistency than using the Carrier information because while the specific names and ownerships of networks change, ASNs for particular networks remain static.
Registering Organization	The Registering Organization is the entity responsible for the the actions and content associated with a given block of IP addresses. This is in contrast to the Carrier, which is responsible for the routing of traffic for network blocks. Registering Organizations include many types of entities, including corporate, government, or educational entities, and ISPs managing the allocation and use of network blocks.

Data Field	Gold Edition Includes Bronze & Silver Benefits Plus:
Anonymizer	Neustar IP Intelligence provides several status designations for anonymized Internet connections: Private, Active, Suspect, Inactive, and Unknown. If there is no designation, then there is no specific evidence that the IP address has been associated with an anonymous proxy.

View/Download User Type Fields PDF

Data Field	ADD ON THIS MODULE CAN BE ADDED TO GOLD, SILVER OR BRONZE EDITIONS
THE ‘USER TYPE’ FIELDS INCLUDE DATA THAT CHARACTERIZE THE LOCATION OF A USER LOGGING ONTO THE INTERNET. ‘USER TYPE’ DATA FIELDS ENABLE YOU TO MAKE INFERENCES ABOUT THE INTENT AND INTERESTS OF AN INTERNET USER.
Home	Indicates whether the connection is made from a residence.
Organization Type	Organization Type: Classification of the type of organization for the place of connection. This field provides heterogeneous categories that are useful for gaining more information about the user. Over 40 different categories for industries are provided, including Insurance, Banking, Lodging, Dining, Government, Educations, Recreation, Advertising and Telecommunication, to name a handful.As well, services include Internet Service Providers, Financial Aggregator Services, Travel Services, Internet Hosting Services, and more.
NAICS Code	The associated North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, v2007, of the organization type.
ISIC Code	The associated International Standard Industrial Classification code, Rev. 4, of the organization type.