Geo-location scripts and their impact on server load
 

I guess they put quite a load on the server compared to serving the same pages as static files with Apache.

But how much more? Triple for sure, 10-fold maybe, or even much more?

Anbody can share some figures?


How does it i.e. compare to mod_rewriting with regular expressions which is quite the cpu killer. Geo-IP lookups sure aren't heavier on the CPU than THAT one or?


Also, anyone have seen a negative impact on google spidering and listing caused by Geo_location based redirects for say, a few selected countries in Europe and third world?

I guess google sends all their spiders from within the US, even for the regional google's databases - so there should be no negative impact as google will not even notice or?



What Geo-Location scripts do you recommend?

I've done it with the apache method on a 500k a day site without CPU problems ... unless you get 10 000 000 page views a day ... no worries

I guess it will work fine if the server is strong.

What do you mean with apache method


I mean redirects based on surfers IP. The IP needs to be looked up in a table holding all ISP's and their IP allocations.

I don't think apache alone can do this. You may confuse geo-location with apache's built in accepted browser language lookup? That doesn't even come close to the accuracy I need.




Oh and I just came across another BS patent. Meanwhile, geo-locating has been patented too, to these folks http://www.digitalenvoy.net

They are currently suing google over this


:321GFY

server load shouldnt be too high at all, btw anyone know where i can get a list of ip ranges and their relavent countries?

Most places sell them, should be easy to find.

Or you can have my mysql DB tables and php functions I put together from various sources, to perform like GeoIP redirection....for a price :Graucho

For commercial companies, try MaxMind , they are used by mysql.com

I use maxmind's mod_geoip. it kicks ass. i notice no difference in server load on extremely high volume servers.

just install mod_geoip

use it with mod_rewrite

GeoIPEnable On
GeoIPDBFile /home/blah/GeoIP.dat
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^JP$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.japan.com [L]

that will route all .jp traffic to japan.com

simple

Like everyone else said, use mod_geoip and then use php or any other way you can get environment or apache notes with to figure out the coutnry and do a redirect. mod_geoip is fast, very. IT would be faster if it could effectively do everything cached in memory, but even the on-disk way is lightning fast.

Also, the people at digitalenvoy.net must be not so bright sadly. Its kinda stupid to sue google over a patent that google is not using directly. even IF digitalenvoy would have a patent on it, they need to sue akamai and not google, because google simply uses akamai to figure out the country.