Geolocating end hosts has improved dramatically in the last few years with tools such as geoiptools.com (https://www.geoiptool.net/) and the Maxmind database (https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-services-and-databases?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpqra2bry4gIViMVkCh1Z7QopEAAYAiAAEgIUyfD_BwE&rId=google). However, when it comes to router nodes, the results typically show them as being located at the owner's head office. For example, ESnet routers which are scattered over the US and also in Europe, are identified as located at the ESnet headquarters in Berkeley, California. This makes it hard to understand and visualize the router a packet takes between a source and destination. The paper at https://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2017/papers/imc17-final96.pdf shows that the existing databases are not reliable for geolocating routers and that there is room to improve their country- and city-level accuracy. They present a set of recommendations to researchers concerning the use of geolocation databases to geolocate routers.
Locating nodes
We propose to research and develop a suite of tools to use trilateration (https://www.e-education.psu.edu/natureofgeoinfo/c5_p12.html) techniques to locate hosts. In particuilar, we will focus on the needs for locating Internet routers. We plan to use Round Trip Time (RTT) measurements made by a ping-based tool from Measurement Agents (MAs) located around the world to the targets, in particular, the routers at traceroute hops. The RTTs are then converted to distance between the MA and target to input to the trilateration.
...