This brute force approach works much better than I expected as long as you have enough probes and a bit of luck.

But of course there are much better and smarter approaches to this, no doubt!

Start by doing the multi-continent probe, say 3x each. Drop the longest time probes, add probes near the shortest time, and probe once. Repeat this pattern of probe, assess, drop and add closer to the target.

You accumulate all data in your orchestrator, so in theory you don't need to deliberately issue multiple probes each round (except for the first) to get statistical power. I would expect this to "chase" the real location continuously instead of 5 discrete phases.

I just watched the Veritasium video on potentials and vector fields - the latency is a scalar potential field of sorts, and you could use it to derive a latency gradient.

Globalping offers real-time result streaming and a simpler user experience with focus on integrations https://globalping.io/integrations

For example you can use the CLI as if you were running a traceroute locally, without even having to register.

And if you need more credits you can simply donate via GitHub Sponsors starting from $1

They are similar with an overlapping audience yet have different goals

You could do even cooler tricks, like https://github.com/blechschmidt/fakeroute

Pointless? Almost certainly.

Email me if you would like to get some additional credits to test it out, dakulovgr gmail.