How do service providers get all the GeoIP companies to have correct
information for their address ranges? Do they just pay them to update it?
At first I thought it had to do with whois data, but my home Verizon IP
whois lists Ashburn, VA, yet the GeoIP data shows my local city.
We're trying to find a way to correct our GeoIP data for a specific IP
range, but aren't sure what the best practices are for doing so. Any
advice would be awesome!
Did that Wiki page ever come back up?
Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373
There is no inherent correlation between IP addressing and geopolitical boundaries.
Maxmind does not concur.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
I've recently SWIP'd some IP space to see if Maxmind would pick up the
new location. 48 hours later it hasn't (just via their free, web-based
query tool). Perhaps I need to be more patient.
Ray
I love OVH where they ask where you want your IP space to be geolocated, but it’s still France/Canada…
Why ask, I guess it worked in the past?
Sincerely,
Eric Tykwinski
TrueNet, Inc.
P: 610-429-8300
F: 610-429-3222
Because folks need to obviate 'GeoIP' filtering so that their services/content can be accessed.
> >> Any advice would be awesome!
> > There is no inherent correlation between IP addressing and
geopolitical
> > boundaries.
>
> Maxmind does not concur.
>
> Regards,
> Bill HerrinI've recently SWIP'd some IP space to see if Maxmind would pick up the
new location. 48 hours later it hasn't (just via their free, web-based
query tool). Perhaps I need to be more patient.Ray
We did the same thing about a week ago, including a correction request with
maxmind to no avail, hence this thread. I have a feeling our patience won't
be rewarded...
Maxmind would have to violate ARIN's rules to collect your geoip
information through a feed of whois data. Those rules forbid
republication of the data.
Try contacting them directly. Then download the files they publish and
check for yourself.
https://support.maxmind.com/geoip-data-correction-request/
http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/
When you've done these things and still haven't gotten satisfaction,
perhaps then it's time to return here for a session of Name and Shame.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
Maxmind would have to violate ARIN's rules to collect your geoip
information through a feed of whois data. Those rules forbid
republication of the data.Try contacting them directly. Then download the files they publish and
check for yourself.https://support.maxmind.com/geoip-data-correction-request/
GeoIP2 Release Notes - 2017 ArchiveWhen you've done these things and still haven't gotten satisfaction,
perhaps then it's time to return here for a session of Name and Shame.Regards,
Bill Herrin
Well, I have already submitted a correction request and waited for their
stated update cycle to happen.
Where do GeoIP companies get their data, if not whois records?
I would assume that they query whois for one of their sources. They
don't have to enter any contract with ARIN to do so but they also
can't promptly collect any sizable portion database that way. That
isn't the same as signing up for bulk whois access
(https://www.arin.net/resources/request/bulkwhois.html).
I imagine they also do traceroutes to identify the last known location
in the route.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
I assumed it must be based off of WHOIS. The IP space I'm working with
is in the midwest (US). The address associated with it is from our
primary IP block out here in California, which it would have only been
able to gather from WHOIS. If it had gone off the last hop, presumably
it would have seen that as something a little closer to the real
location rather than *exactly* where our primary environment is. 
Ray
Is there anyone here who has successfully changed their GeoIP data for a
subset of their ARIN allocation?
How do service providers get all the GeoIP companies to have correct
information for their address ranges? Do they just pay them to update it?
At first I thought it had to do with whois data, but my home Verizon IP
whois lists Ashburn, VA, yet the GeoIP data shows my local city.
We're trying to find a way to correct our GeoIP data for a specific IP
range, but aren't sure what the best practices are for doing so. Any
advice would be awesome!
They could also do RDNS lookups and then see what rwhois says about the domain.
They could purchase sales records from online retailers. Hey guys,
give us the IP address, city, state and zip code for each sale; we'll
pay you a nickle each. Then correlate that with BGP announcements that
show the range of impacted addresses.
They could convince folks to install web browser plugins which give
the users rewards in exchange for ceding personal information. Or buy
data from a company which does.
-Bill
It is a big pain to do so. We did a couple of times in the past and always took us many months.
They could purchase sales records from online retailers. Hey guys,
> give us the IP address, city, state and zip code for each sale; we'll
> pay you a nickle each. Then correlate that with BGP announcements that
> show the range of impacted addresses.
After looking more into the geo ip topic, I totally noticed, geo data should NOT correlate with BGP data at all! There are a couple of geo ip services that are doing it like you described, but IMO it's wrong.
See big telco's announcing /12's and having these IPs spread all over the country.
We have been using Maxmind's open source data set [0] on RIPEstat [1]
now for quite a while and there have been quite many user complaints
about the correctness of the location or the recency of the data.
One reason can be that [0] is updated/released only once a month,
usually beginning of the month. In some cases the Maxmind's online
preview [2] - assuming the underlying data is the paid version - seemed
to be more up-to-date.
Getting BGP topology to geographical location right is not a trivial
task for various reasons of which some were already stated here. From my
experience with Maxmind I think that the RIR's Whois information is a
starting point to bootstrap their database and from there Maxmind uses
ping/traceroute triangulation, change requests... and keep in mind that
Maxmind's main business field is e-commerce which allows them to
correlate requests (IPs from customers) from e-shop site (with known
geographical affiliation).
Since many ISPs seem to suffer from misguided geo-ip information
provided by different providers it would be a huge improvement to have
at least one data set that allows the ISPs to provide location
information to the IP space they own. Few years ago I heard of a project
called OpenGeoFeed [3] but I don't know about its status.
Christian
[0] http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/legacy/geolite/
[1] e.g.
https://stat.ripe.net/widget/geoloc#w.resource=2001%3A67c%3A2e8%3A%3A%2F48
[2] https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo
[3] https://www.opengeofeed.org/
It'd really help if some larger content providers would give LIR's some
tools to effectively manage GeoTargeting within IP allocations and the
subnets therein that they own.
In my experience it takes anywhere between 2 weeks and 6 month to get IP
blocks effectively Geo-targeted.
Google is one of the harder but most visible ones, their online form to
change it doesn't do anything. Going through their NOC usually fixes an
issue within 2-3 weeks. (Google engineers, idea to add tools for that at
https://isp.google.com on a webmaster tool-ish management interface?)
Akamai is usually pretty fast and changing maxmind will eventually
follow up a lot of the remaining sites. But it's a slow process.
Our strategy is generally to change the RIR DB entry to include the
correct country and geoloc fields. Followed by a maxmind update request
and then some direct strings pulled from friendly operator colleagues
and a mail to the Google NOC.
All over the *world*.