Bug#505736: Geo::IPfree country data is outdated and incorrect

[Claus Herwig]

Package: libgeo-ipfree-perl
Version: 0.2-6
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

The country data file provided with Geo::IPfree
/usr/share/perl5/Geo/ipscountry.dat
is extremly outdated and incorrect.

So please include an uptodate country data file.

Attached you'll find three files:
- webgeo2ipct.pl converts an freely available uptodate GPL'ed country 
database to Geo::IPfree's ipscountry.dat.
You can get the required source database file anytime from
http://software77.net/cgi-bin/ip-country/geo-ip.pl
- README.database is the licence file that comes with this source database
- ipscountry.dat is an uptodate generated file as of 14/11/2008


My suggestion would be to replace the file in /usr/share/perl5/Geo with 
the uptodate version and provide the old version together with the 
conversion script and licence file in 
/usr/share/doc/libgeo-ipfree-perl/examples.

I consider this a bug and not a wishlist item because
- packaged ipscountry.dat (27/3/2003) is over five years old and 
contains approx. 30'000 records compared to an uptodate file with about 
90'000 records.
- For roughly 30% of all allocated IPv4 address ranges in the world the 
allocation was changed in the last five years.
- libgeo-ipfree-perl is suggested by packages like awstats. If you use 
it for logfile analysis you get seriously wrong data. For example: After 
doing some tests for myself I'd estimate Geo::IPfree gets it wrong for 
about 50-80% of web traffic in Western Europe. This IMHO renders the 
package quite useless in its current state.


-- 
CHECON   EDV-Consulting und Redaktion
          Claus Herwig * Barer Straße 70 * 80799 München
          +49 89 27826981 * Fax 27826982 * c.herwig at checon.de



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