A method of determining a geographic location of an Internet user involves determining if the host is on-line, determining ownership of the host name, and then determining the route taken in delivering packets to the user. Embodiment of the inventions supporting buffer aliasing through introduction of a level of indirection between a source program’s buffer accesses and the target executable physical buffers, and binding the logical buffer accesses to actual physical buffer accesses at runtime. A gate electrode is formed over the barrier layer.