Determining the State of a User using their Hostname

Posted by PhpMyCoder on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by PhpMyCoder
Published on 2012-06-18T15:13:23Z Indexed on 2012/06/18 15:17 UTC
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Not sure if this is the right SE site. I figured this question doesn't belong on SO, but if you think it doesn't belong here either, I apologize.

I've been looking into determining the location, specifically the state, of a user accessing my website. One of the options I've known about for a while is the GeoIP City Database, however this isn't the most cost effective solution and I'm cheap so I was looking for a less expensive way. Something that occurred to me was that my state was in the public hostname assigned to me by Comcast:

(Dash Separated IP).hsd1.ma.comcast.net

Could it be possible that other ISPs follow this same pattern of inserting the state abbreviation into their users' hostnames? I've been looking around for a list of hostnames for other ISPs, but I haven't found anything. Can anyone verify that this holds true for other major ISPs?

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