Patent ID: 7809857

Claim:
A method to collect geographic location information, the method comprising: collecting geographic location information associated with a network address on an internet protocol (IP) network, the geographic location information being collected from a plurality of geographically dispersed data collection agents capable of individually performing at least one data collection operation in the IP network, the at least one data collection operation including performing a traceroute operation, each data collection operation having an associated confidence value indicative of a likelihood of the data collection operation to determine accurate geographic location information; controlling the plurality of geographically dispersed data collection agents utilizing a data collection broker, the data collection broker determining which data collection operation each data collection agent is to perform; utilizing the geographic location information to associate a geographic location with the network address in the IP network; and associating at least one confidence factor with the geographic location, the confidence factor being derived from the confidence values associated with the least one data collection operation.