Patent ID: 7039689

Claim:
A method for determining the geographical region in which is located a specific host in a wireline Internet network, said method comprising the steps of selecting other hosts in the Internet network, the selected other hosts being located in a plurality of known geographical regions; determining, at a plurality of points in the Internet network, first sets of information associated with the selected other hosts, respectively; determining, at the plurality of points in the Internet network, second sets of information associated with the specific host; classifying the selected other hosts according to their respective geographical regions; determining mean vectors of the first sets of information associated with the selected other hosts; determining Mahalanobis distances of the determined mean vectors from the second sets of information; selecting one of the determined mean vectors with the shortest Mahalanobis distance from the second sets of information; and determining the geographical region of the specific host to be the same as the geographical region of the classified other hosts whose respective determined mean vector is the selected one of the determined mean vectors.