Deriving location information about a communicating entity

A method of discovering geographic significance information about nodes in a communications infrastructure, comprising the steps of:

• (a) deriving location data about a first entity forming one endpoint of an actual or potential path through the communications infrastructure to a second endpoint entity;
• (b) identifying one or more intermediate nodes along said path;
• (c) associating the location data with the or each said intermediate node;
• (d) repeating steps (a) to (c) multiple times for different first-entity locations and thereafter consolidating for each node, the associated location data into location zone data constituting said geographic significance data for the node.

A system for deriving location information about a first entity forming one endpoint of an actual or potential communication path at the other end of which is said system, the path extending at least in part through a fixed communications infrastructure, the system comprising:

• a data store holding information about the geographic significance of internal nodes of the fixed communications infrastructure, with respect to directions of traversal of the nodes;
• a node-discovery subsystem for identifying one or more said nodes that lie along said path intermediate the system and the first entity;
• and
• a data-processing subsystem operative to look up, in the data store, geographic significance information regarding at least one said intermediate node identified by the node discovery subsystem, the geographic significance information concerned relating to a direction of traversal of the node in a direction along said path towards said first entity and this information being used by the data-processing to provide said location information about the first entity.