Content delivery network assisted user geolocation
AssigneeSam Houston State University
InventorMingkui Wei
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Described herein is a novel approach for coarse-grained user geolocation leveraging widely-deployed content delivery networks (CDNs). This method relies on the fact that CDN providers deploy a number of edge servers that are geographically distributed across the world. Many of these edge servers are assigned with unique identifiers that are tied to their location, which can be retrieved by inspecting HTTP responses headers served by these edge servers. As a result, a website can infer coarse-grained user location by asking a user to send an HTTP request to an arbitrary domain that is known being served by a CDN, and inspecting the corresponding responses.
Claims20
A method of determining a geographical location of a device requesting information from a website, the method comprising:
- receiving, at a computer system associated with a website, a request for information associated with the website from a device;
- transmitting, to the device, the requested information from the website, wherein executable software instructions are appended to the requested information by the computer system, and wherein the executable software instructions includes instructions for the device to:
- issue one or more HTTP requests to a content delivery network that is closest to the device, wherein the HTTP requests include a request for the content delivery network to provide header information to the device that includes information associated with a geographical location of the content delivery network;
- and
- transmit the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network to the website in response to receiving the header information from the content delivery network;
- receiving, at the computer system, the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network;
- and
- determining, by the computer system, the geographical location of the device based on the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network.
A method of determining a geographical location of a device requesting information from a website, the method comprising:
- receiving, at a computer system associated with a website, a request for information associated with the website from a device;
- transmitting, to the device, the requested information from the website, wherein executable software instructions are appended to the requested information by the computer system, and wherein the executable software instructions includes instructions for the device to:
- issue one or more HTTP requests to a content delivery network that is closest to the device, wherein the HTTP requests include a request for the content delivery network to provide header information to the device that includes information associated with a geographical location of the content delivery network;
- and
- transmit the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network to the website in response to receiving the header information from the content delivery network;
- receiving, at the computer system, the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network;
- determining, by the computer system, the geographical location of the device based on the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network;
- accessing, by the computer system, an IP-based geographical location of the device from a geolocation database;
- and
- determining, by the computer system, whether a difference exists between the determined geographical location of the device and the IP-based geographical location.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon that are executable by a computing device to perform operations, comprising:
- receiving a request for information associated with a website from a device;
- transmitting, to the device, the requested information from the website, wherein executable software instructions are appended to the requested information by the computer system, and wherein the executable software instructions includes instructions for the device to:
- issue one or more HTTP requests to a content delivery network that is closest to the device, wherein the HTTP requests include a request for the content delivery network to provide header information to the device that includes information associated with a geographical location of the content delivery network;
- and
- transmit the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network to the website in response to receiving the header information from the content delivery network;
- receiving the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network;
- and
- determining the geographical location of the device based on the information associated with the geographical location of the content delivery network.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.