>> Something that I have often wondered is how folks would feel about >> publishing some sort of geo information in reverse DNS (something like >> LOC records, with whatever precision you like) -- this would allow the >> folks that geo stuff to automagically provide the best answer, and >> because you control the record, you can specify whatever resolution / >> precision you like. > > yes!
FWIW, there has been some work in the IETF on creating protocols to allow pretty rich location information to be published in reverse DNS. Basically, you publish a NAPTR pointer to a location server [1] where an interested client can ask for the location of a specific IP address [2][3]. (Publishing location in this way is a requirement in several systems for VoIP 9-1-1 around the world to allow first responders to ask networks for location. See for example the NENA i3 architecture in the US and a similar "Canadian i2" for Canada.) The location representation these protocols use is a profile of the Geospatial Markup Language, so you can represent anything from a simple point to full GIS-like layers; you can also represent civic addresses (i.e., postal addresses) directly. If people are interested, let me know and I can provide pointers to some useful open-source software. --Richard [1] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-lis-discovery> [2] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-http-location-delivery> [3] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-held-identity-extensions> [4] <http://www.nena.org/standards/technical/voip/i3-requirements>