1. Introduction

   It has been a long standing problem to relate IP numbers to
   geographical locations. The availability of Geographical location
   information has immediate applications in network management.  Such
   information can be used to supplement the data already provided by
   utilities such as whois [Har85], traceroute [VJ89], and nslookup
   [UCB89].  The usefulness and functionality of these already widely
   used tools would be greatly enhanced by the provision of reliable
   geographical location information.

   The ideal way to manage and maintain a database of information, such
   as geographical location of internet hosts, is to delegate
   responsibility to local domain administrators. A large distributed
   database could be implemented with a simple mechanism for updating
   the local information.  A query mechanism also has to be available
   for checking local entries, as well as inquiring about data from
   non-local domains.