A new DNS geolocation service from PowerDNS
Today Bert Huber from PowerDNS announced a new DNS-based geolocation service. Given an IP, it returns the corresponding latitude and longitude coordinates. Using it is simple; to look up the coordinates for IP address 1.2.3.4, just reverse the octets and query the TXT record for 4.3.2.1.geo.lua.powerdns.org. I don't see any official details from PowerDNS yet, just Bert's tweet, but based on the domain, the service appears to be using PowerDNS' Lua capabilities.
The usual caveats about geolocation apply:
$ dig +short TXT 73.52.93.172.geo.lua.powerdns.org
"33.745800 -117.826202"
Despite that server living in Dallas, the coordinates that come back are for Tustin, CA. That's because the ARIN allocation for 172.93.48.0/21
points to a corporate address in Tu...