Where does geographic IP information come from? How is it obtained? From Who? Like Maxmind and IP2Location.?

Answer 1

That really depends on the specific database and the granularity of the information. Some companies use publicly available information while other companies use proprietary technology.

There are also various methods of estimating the geographical location of an IP address. For example, here are several ways 1) Tracer Route 2) Ping Trace 3) User Entered Information 4) HTML headers taken from browser. There might be more. Depending on the method, there may be different sources of data.

Not sure where IP2location gets the information but according to the information on the following page, MaxMind uses publicly available information from the Regional Internet Registries to provide their free country database. The commercial version is based on proprietary technology built on user entered information.

Answer 2

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Canada, the United States, and portions of the Caribbean.