Estimation of internet node location by latency measurements : the underestimation problem

Abstract

In this paper we deal with discovering a geographic location of a node in the Internet. Knowledge of location if fundamental element for many location based applications and web services. We focus on location finding without any assistance of the node being located – client-independent estimation. We estimate a location using communication latency measurements between nodes in the Internet. The latency measured is converted into a geographic distance which is used to derive a location by the multilateration (triangulation) principle. We analyse the latency-to-distance conversion with a consideration of location underestimation which is a product of multilateration failure. We demonstrate that location underestimations do not appear in experimental conditions. However with a real-world scenario, a number of devices cannot be located due to underestimations. Finally, we propose a modification to reduce the number of underestimations in real-world scenarios.