IP Geolocation

This article describes the concept of IP geolocation and some of its challenges with regard to connectivity services.

Overview

IP geolocation is the process of identifying the approximate geographic location of an internet-connected device based on its IP address. This technology is used in various applications, including:

• Security and filtering: Some websites or systems are restricted to being accessed from certain regions or countries for security reasons. These restrictions rely on IP location data to determine the user's origin.

• Online advertising: Targeting ads to specific regions.

• Fraud detection: Identifying suspicious activity based on location.

• Cybersecurity: Tracking of criminal activity on the internet.

• Web analytics: Understanding user demographics.

The most common method used to track the location of an IP address is using IP location databases. There are many databases maintained by various 3rd parties, such as Maxmind and IP2Location to name a couple. Various sites such as https://www.iplocation.net/ can also be used to query a range of databases at the same time.

IP location challenges

It's important to note that IP geolocation is not always completely accurate.

Databases can quite frequently contain erroneous or out of date data with regard to a specific IP address's location, and some databases may not contain the same information as others. This can often result in random and inconsistent issues depending on which database is being referenced.

The most common issue seen as a result of incorrect IP location data is the inability to access websites or systems that are restricted to a specific source region or country.

For example, the Hosted Network Partner Portal is restricted to IPs located in Australia and Philippines only. This restriction relies on the data from a 3rd party database to determine the source region of a user attempting to access the site. In this case, an Australian nbn connection with an IP address that is incorrectly referenced as residing in the US will not be able to access the website.

How do IP databases get incorrect location data?

Several factors can contribute to an IP address being incorrectly classified in a location database. These include but are not limited to:

• Newly advertised IP ranges that have not been visible on the internet for long enough for databases to accurately classify them.

• The traffic originating from the IP address may have been observed to be coming from a different country at a previous time, possibly due to a previous owner of the IP address utilising a VPN service or something similar

• General issues with inaccurate database data or the 3rd party who maintains the database

How do we resolve IP location issues?

Hosted Network frequently introduce new IP ranges as part of general growth and expansion of our connectivity services. While all care is taken during commissioning of a new range, sometimes these new ranges contain IPs that are incorrectly geolocated. This requires us to monitor these ranges for a period of time to ensure they are accurate, and work with database providers to correctly classify IPs as required, however this process can take time and relies on the responsiveness of the 3rd party managing the database.

In the event that we cannot easily resolve an issue with an IP's location and the issue has a large impact to useability of the service, we will sometimes opt to issue a new IP on a different range (where possible) while the issue is reviewed further.

If you have any issues with a connectivity service with regard to incorrect geolocation data, please reach out to our support team via [e-mail] with the details of your service and they will be happy to assist.