Building an IP Address Lookup Tool

What Is IP Impala?

IP Impala is an IP address lookup tool that shows you the geographic location, ISP, organization, and network details for any IPv4 or IPv6 address. Enter an IP and instantly see where it is located, who owns it, and what network it belongs to.

It also detects your own public IP automatically, so you can quickly check your current connection details without looking them up elsewhere.

Architecture Overview

IP Lookup Request
  -> CloudFront (static frontend + API)
    -> API Gateway
      -> Lambda (IP resolution)
        -> GeoIP database lookup (in-memory)
        -> ASN / ISP database lookup
          -> Return structured result

Auto-detect (visitor IP)
  -> CloudFront header: X-Forwarded-For
    -> Lambda extracts client IP
      -> Same lookup pipeline

The Lambda function loads a GeoIP database into memory at cold start. Once loaded, lookups are pure in-memory operations that complete in under 1ms. The database is stored in an S3 bucket and updated on a regular schedule to keep location data accurate.

Geolocation and Network Data

For each IP address, IP Impala returns country, region, city, postal code, latitude, longitude, and timezone. On the network side, it identifies the ISP name, organization, ASN (Autonomous System Number), and whether the IP belongs to a hosting provider, VPN, or residential connection.

Results are displayed on an interactive map pin alongside a structured data table. Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are fully supported with the same level of detail.

Performance and Privacy

Because the GeoIP database runs in-memory inside the Lambda function, there are no external API calls during a lookup. This keeps response times consistently under 50ms and means no third-party service sees the queried IP addresses.

IP Impala does not log or store the IP addresses that users look up. The tool is stateless by design: each request is processed and the result is returned without any data being persisted.