Wireless Geolocation (HTML 5 Geolocation API) vs. IP Geolocation

Introduction

It is good that with the introduction of HTML 5, there is now a specification for a Geolocation API. Geolocation is the technology of figuring out where you are in the world. There are many ways to figure out where you are — your IP address, your wireless network connection, which cell tower your phone is talking to, or dedicated GPS hardware that receives latitude and longitude information from satellites in the sky. This article aims to show you what are the things you can do with this new API controlled by web browser client based on wireless geolocation and compare it with the server-side IP geolocation.


Using the traditional Geolocation via IP address

Below is the traditional way of doing Geolocation via IP address using IP2Location's database. In this case, the server side code will check the detected user IP address against the IP2Location database.



Using the new HTML 5 Geolocation API which checks your network adapter's MAC address

Now compare it with Geolocation API which is using the Javascript code below. Your web browser must supports HTML 5 and you need to grant the permission to collect geolocation data.

<div id="GeoAPI"></div> <script language="Javascript"> if (navigator.geolocation) { navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) { doStuff(position.coords.latitude, position.coords.longitude); }); } else { if (document.getElementById("GeoAPI")) { document.getElementById("GeoAPI").innerHTML = "I'm sorry but geolocation services are not supported by your browser"; document.getElementById("GeoAPI").style.color = "#FF0000"; } } function doStuff(mylat, mylong) { if (document.getElementById("GeoAPI")) { document.getElementById("GeoAPI").innerHTML = "<iframe style=\"width: 400px; height: 400px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"http://maps.google.com/?ll=" + mylat + "," + mylong + "&z=16&output=embed\"></iframe>"; } } </script>


Comparison

	Wireless Geolocation	IP Address Geolocation
Technology	MAC Address and Signal Strength	IP Address
Accuracy	Medium-High	Medium (City level)
Availability	Medium (Depends to Data)	High
Privacy	Low	Medium
End-user Permission	Required	No
Browser Compatibility	HTML 5 and above	All

Sample applications using HTML 5 Geolocation

1. Find points of interest in the user's area
2. Annotating content with location information
3. Show the user's position on a map
4. Turn-by-turn route navigation
5. Alerts when points of interest are in the user's vicinity
6. Up-to-date local information
7. Location-tagged status updates in social networking applications

Sample applications using IP address Geolocation

1. Display native language and currency
2. Redirect web pages based on geographical
3. Digital Rights Management
4. Prevent password sharing and abuse of service
5. Reduce credit card fraud
6. Web log statistics and analysis
7. Auto-selection of country on forms
8. Filter access from countries you do not do business with
9. Geo targeting for increased sales and click-through
10. Spam filtering by location

Conclusion

As you can see, the location detected for the HTML 5 Geolocation API could be more accurate when it is actually able to detect your location. Currently, it may not be able to detect all locations yet and not all browsers at present support this Geolocation API.

There is also a privacy issue so you will need to agree to share your current location with the geo data provider, which is currently Google, to be able to utilize this functionality.

On the other hand, the traditional method of Geolocation which check your IP address is less intrusive at the cost of being less accurate when it comes to dynamic IP addresses.

However for most developers, it is usually sufficient for their daily needs. IP Geolocation would be the preferred choice of developers who wish to shield their users from having their privacy intruded upon.