May

What Can Online IP Lookup Tools Do For You?

Rai

Linux

IP addresses can be used to identify someone’s identity on the internet by disclosing information like the location where the IP address originated. In this world where one can be as anonymous as he can get on the Internet, knowing the location of a certain IP address can be a huge help in securing servers especially if you have a server that needs to be publicly open, like a web server. So how do you know where the IP is coming from?

Malicious hackers often exploit web servers because port 80 is an open port if your servers host websites. Like for example, as a system administrator for a US-based ecommerce company, I often get to experience someone doing series of DOS attacks to one of our webservers, causing the resources of the server to be utilized up to the point of freezing the machine and rendering the services it hosts unavailable. What this means to our company is loss of sales because the websites have become inaccessible for our customers. What needs to be done is to know where the attacker is from, and if it is outside the United States, the IP address should be blocked.

To help me identify the IP address, I use tools that can be found on the Internet, such as whatismyipaddress.com’s ip lookup tool. What is does is it identifies where the IP address is registered and displays the city and country of the IP address. Just type in the IP address in the box and click the Lookup IP address button. When it is done scanning, you will be shown the location of the IP address, and the ISP who owns it. Another additional feature of the tool is that it displays a geographical map of the location, powered by Google’s Google Maps.

With this tool, I can identify where the attacks on our servers are coming from, and this way, it helps me to identify if certain requests are legitimate or not.