Super fast IP to lat/lng in Rails - Part 2 9

Posted by aaron
on Tuesday, October 30
In Super fast IP to lat/lng in Rails, I showed a solution for fast IP to lat/lng resolution in rails. I called it "Super fast" because it performed orders of magnitude faster the the RESTful interface, but it was also "Super fast" to implement. That being said, Kyle made a comment to check out the GeoIP gem. I had heard of MaxMind before, but I didnt want to spend hundreds of dollars to solve this problem. What I didnt know was they also have a free download of their "lite" datasource. They have a GeoLiteCountry and GeoLiteCity version, although only the City version has lat/lng info. They provide wrappers in most languages (including Ruby), and while Kyle's suggested geoip, I found geoip_city on RubyForge which I like a bit better.

[UPDATED]: I had forgotten to include the install instructions for getting the GeoIP C library. Install the C bindings, the gem (which isnt packaged as a gem for easy download) and get the data. 
wget http://www.maxmind.com/download/geoip/api/c/GeoIP.tar.gz
tar -zxvf GeoIP.tar.gz
cd GeoIP
./configure && make && sudo make install

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/27077/geoip_city-0.1.gem
sudo gem install geoip_city-0.1.gem
wget http://www.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
gunzip GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/GeoIP
sudo mv GeoLiteCity.dat /usr/local/share/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat
Then the ruby part: 
>> require 'geoip_city'
>> g = GeoIPCity::Database.new('/usr/local/share/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat')
>> res = g.look_up('4.2.2.2')
>> puts "lat: #{res[:latitude]} lng: #{res[:longitude]}"
lat: 38.0 lng: -97.0
So the question is (although its probably obvious), which is faster? 
>>  Benchmark.measure { 1000.times {Hostip.geocode('4.2.2.2')}}.total
=> 1.02
>>   Benchmark.measure { 100000.times {g.look_up('4.2.2.2')}}.total
=> 0.5
Conclusion? The C library is MUCH faster than my database version. 200k req/s vs. 1k req/s. As a side note, I also tested the "geoip" gem, and it was about 3x faster than my database version.

But all in all, for the 5 minutes it took me to write the original version, it was fast enough... but MaxMind GeoLiteCity + the geoip_city gem is Super fast-er.
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  1. Brian – November 06, 2007 @ 07:44 PM
    I tried to download and install the gem and got this: Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: While executing gem ... (RuntimeError) Error instaling geoip_city-0.1.gem: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. ruby extconf.rb install geoip_city-0.1.gem checking for GeoIP_record_by_ipnum() in -lGeoIP... no *** extconf.rb failed *** Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more details. You may need configuration options. Provided configuration options: --with-opt-dir --without-opt-dir --with-opt-include --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include --with-opt-lib --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib --with-make-prog --without-make-prog --srcdir=. --curdir --ruby=/usr/local/bin/ruby --with-geoip-dir --without-geoip-dir --with-geoip-include --without-geoip-include=${geoip-dir}/include --with-geoip-lib --without-geoip-lib=${geoip-dir}/lib --with-GeoIPlib --without-GeoIPlib Gem files will remain installed in /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/geoip_city-0.1 for inspection. Results logged to /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/geoip_city-0.1/gem_make.out
  2. Aaron Batalion – November 07, 2007 @ 03:14 PM
    Brian, Good catch. I already had the GeoIP C library installed. I've since updated the install instructions above to include that. Thanks. Aaron
  3. Muntasim – January 21, 2008 @ 01:54 AM
    Hi, I am in trouble to install GeoIP C library in windows... Please help.. Thanks in advance
  4. Aman Gupta – January 23, 2008 @ 04:01 PM
    Does GeoIPCity return any city information? irb(main):008:0> g.look_up('99.136.101.165') => {:country_name=>"United States", :latitude=>38.0, :longitude=>-97.0, :country_code=>"US", :country_code3=>"USA"}
  5. Philippe April – January 29, 2008 @ 10:36 PM
    That's great, you saved me a lot of time, and you even did the benchmarks!
  6. Abdul Barek – February 04, 2008 @ 02:59 AM
    Hi all, I wanna use geo_ip for windows.Please let me know if anybody kind on me.I did it for linux server but can not use for windows(XP).Please help me ASAP Thanks
  7. Tom Y – February 07, 2008 @ 01:41 PM
    Hi, I installed this plugin step by step, and when I run require 'geoip_city', I got following error msg: LoadError: libGeoIP.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory - /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/geoip_city-0.1/./geoip_city.so Can anyone help me with this? Thanks in advance!
  8. 水泵 – March 29, 2008 @ 04:56 AM
    上海山楠泵业有限公司 （原上海红星水泵厂） 成立于八十年代，是国内一家专业设计、销售水泵的大型综合性企业。本司拥有一批专业技术精英、管理水平高的复合型人才，管理和技术力量雄厚，有开发现代化高科技产品的可靠信心及稳固的基础
  9. Amjith PS – April 03, 2008 @ 12:40 AM
    Hi, Can you fix this error, I have error in -->require 'geoip_city' Its missing this file., with error "no such file to load -- geoip_city" Can anyone tel me where this file is located? Thanks in advance. Amjith PS
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