WorldIP is a useful network add-on for Firefox.
What it does is provide a whole lot of useful network information related to websites. This includes the IP address of the server which hosts the website/domain, the datacenter, provider and autonomous system (AS) details, DNS records information, country where the domain/website is located. Besides that, it even provides information about own (user’s) public IP address, provider details if needed.
How this works is whenever this add-on is active, it will randomly query a list of public DNS servers so as to get various related information like DNS records, IP details and so on. Also, geolocation of server and datacenters for the website is accurately obtained by querying the WIP database (this is through https so it is encrypted). During this whole process, there is no slowdown when browsing websites because this process is asynchronous.
To use WorldIP, download and install it from here.
Once installed, it can be customized as needed using Tools > Add-ons and choosing Options.
The location of the add-on icon can be changed as needed. Also, displaying own public IP and other DNS settings can be changed from here.
Various options for “Statusbar” can be customized from here as below.
Finally, the list of public DNS servers that are randomly queried can be changed from here. It is recommended to add some nearest DNS servers from OpenNIC nearest servers list.
To see WorldIP in action, open a website. Hover the mouse pointer on the country flag to get a lot of network related info.
Further details about WorldIP add-on can be obtained from it’s website here.
Happy and safe surfing.