Webtool for DNS lookup/Who is/trace/etc.

Looking for some favorite tools used to research ip addresses

[taktakgoose]

Hello,

First off - I have been hanging around this board for the past month and learning a TON of stuff. Haven't had need to post any questions since there is so much available. Thanks - this board is an incredible resource.

Somewhere on this board, once upon a time, someone posted a url to a DNS/tracert/arin/whois lookup tool. It was nothing pretty to look at (simple ip address entry box, brown background), but was very fast, useful (searched a bunch of different locations in one go). I lost that bookmark in a Windows disaster this morning and have been searching the board for the post - but can't find it.

So... instead of just asking for that (though that would be fine) - a more general question:

If you want to drill down and find out the who/what/where/when/how of an individual who has checked out your site - how do you do it? What tools and tricks to the masters use?

Cheers,
goose

[martinibuster]

dnsstuff.com

This site has everything on it, even a spam ip database lookup. And I like it when the result comes from verisign and the web page gets hissy about it because it has to refer you to verisign's "ad laden" web page.

:) Y

[xbase234]

this may be the one you are referring to -

[cc-uia.ac.be...]

[Key_Master]

Sam Spade?

[samspade.org...]

[amoore]

Might try [geektools.com...]
seems pretty good to me.

[taktakgoose]

Ah...

I was reading the forum on spider identification today and found the url I was looking for:

[canufly.net...]

Thanks for the above responses as well...

Cheers,
goose

[jm_uk]

In addition to all of the online tools mentioned, there are companies out there who have IP address space mapping technologies/databases that they sell.

For instance, there are several geo-targeting companies out there who will allow you to target your content based on the end user's location. Most of these software vendors have a database which maps IP address to geographical location.

You could use some of these vendors' technologies from an analytical perspective to understand the geographic location of our web browsers. Of course, this type of technology is not cheap and is not perfect (AOL users, for instance, will never be accurately located due to the way AOL allocates it's IP addresses).

Alternatively, you could try the page tagging approach where you put JavaScript in your pages and drag out the browser local/language details. For instance, if a web browser is set to British English you would see en/gb as the value. You could argue this is at least as accurate as using the IP address mapping and is a lot cheaper to implement.