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ip2location updated to the wrong location
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ip2location updated to the wrong location

Mrkrabz2Mrkrabz2 Member
edited January 2020 in Help

We acquired a subnet some months ago and it was originally showing up as Switzerland, which is correct as it's where it used to be.

All our hardware is in the UK, but we also run an anycast network on-top. I contacted ip2location in order to get our subnet updated to the UK as the services we run use ip2location to separate servers up by country.

After a bit of back and forward, they refused to change our subnet to the UK and instead listed us as germany due to anycast. We do have a germany node for anycast, but it's currently only going through small peers so hardly pulls any traffic (It's mainly UK or Poland).

Since then, they haven't replied to our emails in over 4 and a bit weeks.

On-top of this, every other service that I'm aware of has us listed in the UK including Maxmind and every other place I've tried. Sadly, what we run they use ip2locations databases.

Does anyone have a contact within ip2location or know some other way?

Comments

  • hzrhzr Member
    edited January 2020

    What are you 'running'? And no, this is up to them, there is nothing you can do.

  • I was just hoping for a contact in ip2location, the person we spoke to seemed very off with us and just stopped replying altogether

  • estnocestnoc Member, Patron Provider

    ip2location demands traceroute results from you and they want to see it with their very own eyes that it is located exactly where you say its located at. otherwise they do nothing. so, you have to prepare traceroute results where it is clearly visible that your ip subnet is running in UK.

    Thanked by 1Mrkrabz2
  • hzrhzr Member
    edited January 2020

    If this is truly anycast, why does it matter "where it is" ,is my weird question..

  • pikepike Veteran
    edited January 2020

    Haha ip2location has been abused by Teamspeak Server owners wanting to do some SEO magic. Back then when I found out they accepted location change notifications without even checking :D

  • What exactly did you tell them? I didn't have an issue getting them to set the location of my anycast network.

    What transit providers do your nodes use?

    They told me they use "probes" to ping and estimate your location. So if your transit providers or anycast setup is bad, they can be confused into thinking your location is in Germany. Germany has the best peering in Europe and likely has the lowest ping to their probes.

  • Mostly NTT and Cogent, as I said previously tho, we only announce from core-backbone in Germany and it pulls little to no traffic (that is on purpose right now).

    ICMP is set to be forwarded from all the PoP's and reply from the London location (our actual hardware) so it shows a decently accurate latency when testing icmp against our anycast IP's.

  • pike said: Haha ip2location has been abused by Teamspeak Server owners wanting to do some SEO magic. Back then when I found out they accepted location change notifications without even checking

    Just curious, can you elaborate on the purpose or benefit of this is?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited January 2020

    I don’t understand why so many people care about random geoip databases. Maybe when it involves maxmind or something but that’s rarely relevant to server IPs as VPN > location anyway. The only thing they’ve ever meant to me is people using them to argue about where a server is located because they don’t know any better.

  • pikepike Veteran

    @jar for Teamspeak there is an internal serverlist than you can use to search through all existing servers. The search query defaults to "all servers of clients country ordered by Region within the country. However the max. results one can see is 100, so if youre a client from germany, you'll see 100 servers that are located in "Baden-Württemberg". So basically to even appear in the server list you need a server that is ip2location geolocated to Baden-Württemberg, which appears to not have many datacenters that offer VPS hosting (except for 1&1). Back in the days, SEO like this meant a HUGE increase of users visiting a public server. I remember, some years later, I've even seen a Server Provider offering teamspeak SEO IPs specifically for this use.

    Thanked by 1jar
  • hzrhzr Member

    @pike that legitimately sounds like the stupidest thing imaginable.

    Thanked by 1pike
  • @jar said:
    I don’t understand why so many people care about random geoip databases. Maybe when it involves maxmind or something but that’s rarely relevant to server IPs as VPN > location anyway. The only thing they’ve ever meant to me is people using them to argue about where a server is located because they don’t know any better.

    I agree, but sadly the services we run, they solely rely on ip2location for separating up servers, so we have no choice but to follow along.

    The further you are from the "geo location" the less likely a user is going to either see your server. For us, being listed as Germany isn't ideal as we don't get the UK clients we want. The sole reason we use anycast is to distribute DDoS attacks (very specific L7 attacks that require caching etc which no provider does). Once you are connected to a anycast PoP the traffic is just forwarded to our UK location after filtering.

    Anyway, they started contacting me after this thread was put up (No idea if it's just a coincidence but will see how it goes).

    Thanked by 1jar
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