If the WHOIS record is accurate for 90% of all domains, why bother with pattern matching and code conversion?
The 90-10 rule applies here. Roughly speaking, 90% of the Internet’s traffic is carried by 10% of all domains (actually, it’s probably more like 99.99%-00.01%, since there are millions of domains and only a few dozen major ISPs). So, while the WHOIS record might be accurate for 90% of all domains, the domains its inaccurate for are actually far more important. You’ll notice that in most traceroutes, the same top-level domains (alter.net, earthlink.net and its subsidiaries, verio.net, flash.net, etc) show up over and over again. All of these companies have country-wide and sometimes worldwide prescense, so a single WHOIS location could never be accurate for them. 1.5. Why traceroute to a given host instead of just converting that host directly to a location? Converting a single host to a location is actually harder than using traceroute to find the location. As an example, if you’re dialing up from a local ISP, your IP address maybe “dialup-17.somelocalisp.net”. Unless that local ISP is
