How does Loki generate the location? From GPS? IP? Need to get it working on networked ships

[tatlar]

I work on a project where we have high speed (broadband) internet on
research vessels around the globe provided by satellite (http://
hiseasnet.ucsd.edu/). I am looking at Loki as a solution for them to
locate themselves on a map and display amenities that are relevant to
them when they are close to port.

I need to know how Loki works: if it works from GPS then it should
work when the ships are out in the middle of the Pacific or Indian
oceans. However, if it works from IP, then it will always locate our
vessels in San Diego, as the IP spaces are based (namespaced) out of
the University of California, San Diego.

Can someone help me out? Thanks in advance.

[tatlar]

Does no-one know the answer to this? Are any of the Loki engineers in
this group?

Is the only planned use case for people on-land?

Oh well, fair enough, but it seems a little limiting.

[alfred]

It seems to me that it only works based on IP addresses associated
with Wi-Fi points (http://www.loki.com/support/how-it-works) with a
fallback API to allow you to find the city of your ISP if you do not
have Wi-Fi. I suppose that if your ships were in a port that had
registered Wi-Fi points then Loki might place your users in the
correct location.

[Erik Allik]

Loki works by mapping IDs of (possibly multiple) nearby WiFi access
points to previously known geographic coordinates, it does not use GPS
nor IP (IP is only a fallback solution). And the IP based fallback
solution does not require the IP to be obtained from a WiFi network as
IP based geolocation can be done using very simple tools available for
most programming languages without any WiFi related technologies
whatsoever.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Regards,
Erik

[Ryan Sarver]

Erik is correct! Nice description of the system. You can learn more about
how Wi-Fi Positioning (WPS) works by going to:
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/wps.php

Best, Ryan