Understanding how location is found

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Level 1

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Understanding how location is found

We are using ATT/Uverse and have a wireless network (wifi) with 3 computers. When using maps and other programs, how is current location determined? A few minutes ago, with two computers in the same room, one showed our location address as the house to the right of us, and the other showed current location as house 2 doors down to the left. (But, if I zoom in on maps, the circle for our current location is squarely in front of our house, just the address displayed is incorrect) What determines location and physical address of location?

Posted on Oct 27, 2016 1:35 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,522 points

Oct 27, 2016 5:51 PM in response to FlamingFool

There are two ways that location is determined, but I imagine your observation stems from this one.

Macs do not have GPS or Cellular receivers to determine precise (or semi-precise) location. So, in order to determine location they survey the WiFI landscape taking note of the power of nearby access points. It triangulates a position based on the signals from the WiFi access points.

Apple keeps a database of known WiFi access point locations and uses those coordinates to fix a position based on the triangulation.

There are also standard lookup routines which map the coordinates to place names, house addresses, etc. (Geo Location).

Since the accuracy of the WiFi Access Point triangulation may be very coarse, your "location" will bounce around and each device will likely have a different location from the others at any given time. If one device's "location" is closer to your neighbor, the Geo Location routine will pull your neighbor's address instead of yours.

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