hello everybody
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo, Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses ?
Our AS (41666) is located in CH, so also all the ripe objects are registered with country-code CH.
Now we have a customer located in Germany, so I created a inetnum-block with his subnet in ripe-db with country-code DE. This was a week ago. The customer is still complaining that he is constantly redirected to the swiss-versions of all the services.
Does anybody of you experienced a similar problem ? Does anybody knows proper solution ?
Thanks for any advice in advance
Best regards
Stefan Renner
Stefan Renner Network Engineer
MYGATE Translumina Networks AG Flurstrasse 50 CH-8048 Zürich
Fon: +41 44 540 22 11 Fax: +41 44 540 23 46
stefan.renner@mygate.net www.mygate.net
Stefan Renner wrote:
hello everybody
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo, Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses?
So far, the most accurate data I've seen are from countries.nerd.dk - whether they use that, I don't know.
Dear Stefan
One possible source of that problem could be outdated databases of a geolocation service provider.
There are some commercial providers (e.g. ip2location.com) which offer geolocation of IPs as a serivce. This makes sense sometimes, when e.g. a network spans multiple regions and/or countries and you still want to know, where a specific IP is located. Those service providers do not only rely on the public IP databases such as RIPE, but also on other information (probably confidential, how they exactly do it). The downside is, that they do plausibilty checks and it might be, that it seems unplausible to them, that a german customers has a Swiss upstream...?
Only one of a gazillion possible reasons...
Kind regards, Viktor
-----Original Message----- From: swinog-bounces@lists.swinog.ch [mailto:swinog-bounces@lists.swinog.ch] On Behalf Of Stefan Renner Sent: Dienstag, 27. April 2010 10:15 To: swinog@swinog.ch Subject: [swinog] Geolocating IP's
hello everybody
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo, Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses ?
Our AS (41666) is located in CH, so also all the ripe objects are registered with country-code CH.
Now we have a customer located in Germany, so I created a inetnum-block with his subnet in ripe-db with country-code DE. This was a week ago. The customer is still complaining that he is constantly redirected to the swiss-versions of all the services.
Does anybody of you experienced a similar problem ? Does anybody knows proper solution ?
Thanks for any advice in advance
Best regards
Stefan Renner
Stefan Renner Network Engineer
MYGATE Translumina Networks AG Flurstrasse 50 CH-8048 Zürich
Fon: +41 44 540 22 11 Fax: +41 44 540 23 46
stefan.renner@mygate.net www.mygate.net
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
hello everybody
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo, Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses ?
I don't expect somebody from Google coming forward ;-)
My guess(es): - Google: they built their own database, based on data available from commercial providers (maxmind) - Facebook: dito, of course with less engineering effort than Big G. - Zattoo: probably uses Maxmind's dataset with little local modifications
There's not much you can do IMO. If some website thinks you are in country X, and refuses to provide certain services as a result, the only solution is to complain to the website directly and ask them to update their databases. I don't think people can read the RIPE databases in realtime.
Rainer
According to our books of wisdom (KXCD, Dilbert, ...), people enter their geoIP by themselves: http://xkcd.com/713/
:)
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo,
Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses ?
Hello Stefan
Does anybody of you experienced a similar problem ? Does anybody knows proper solution ?
I assume most of the geo-ip-stuff is based loosely on RIPE-DB. But I am pretty sure you need a few month until changes in RIPE-DB will be reflected in the geo-ip-databases.
Seen that before. A customer got a PI-Allocation which before was present in Belguim. The Google frontpage was looking very different because they lost a case in court and had openly to appologize. :) A few month after changing the location in RIPE-DB the problem was solved.
So either you can persuade the opeator of that site to update his own location-db or simply wait a few month. YMMV.
Now we have a customer located in Germany, so I created a inetnum-block with his subnet in ripe-db with country-code DE.
Just one last thought: is this customer really located in Germany? I mean: I have customers which are registred in Panama or on Mauritius (no kidding!) still I set the country-code for these networks to Switzerland because the users of those IPs (the servers actually) are here in Switzerland.
actually there's usually much more information than just country code. At least sites like http://adultfriendsfinder.com/ show my town quite precisely, and my IP is a part of a huge Cablecom pool.
I think most of e-commerce sites supply the location information, either for free or for money: http://www.maxmind.com/app/ccv_ecommerce_software
Google has its own e-commerce where people are asked to enter their locations.
________________________________ From: Roman Hochuli roman.hochuli@nexellent.ch
Does anybody of you experienced a similar problem ? Does anybody knows proper solution ?
I assume most of the geo-ip-stuff is based loosely on RIPE-DB. But I am pretty sure you need a few month until changes in RIPE-DB will be reflected in the geo-ip-databases.
Hello Stan
actually there's usually much more information than just country code. At least sites like http://adultfriendsfinder.com/ show my town quite precisely, and my IP is a part of a huge Cablecom pool.
I am actually not fully satified with the quality of those ads.
When I still resided somewhere between Baden and Bremgarten I was recognised as "Otelfingen" (not a real surprise with a Cablecom-connection, right?).
Since I changed to our own VDSL I seem to live in Therwil (BL) according to the ads. That's over two years now. And I do certainly not speak 'Baseldiitsch'.
OTOH I actually do not really care about those personal-ads anyway. ;)
Hello,
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo, Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses ?
Probably a mix between some sources of GeoIP DB such as MaxMind/ip2location, a mix of home-made database (ASN, IPs, latency) and obviously browser locales settings.
Each probably handle it in a different way.
Now we have a customer located in Germany, so I created a inetnum-block with his subnet in ripe-db with country-code DE. This was a week ago. The customer is still complaining that he is constantly redirected to the swiss-versions of all the services.
You should maybe have given a /24 PI rather than chunking one of your main IP block. I am sure those Geolocating-guy would lookup more often /24 PI than /23 PA for instance.
Does anybody of you experienced a similar problem ? Does anybody knows proper solution ?
Yes, had been given a Greek IP space from RIPE about a year ago or so. After 6-9 months of use it seems that finally most of those GeoIP caught the new location correctly. Only solution: be patient.
actually there's usually much more information than just country code. At least sites like http://adultfriendsfinder.com/ show my town
quite > precisely, and my IP is a part of a huge Cablecom pool.
Quite true. They probably got enough money to bust customers.
I am actually not fully satified with the quality of those ads.
What? The girls doesn't live in your town or they are not hot enough? Just kidding obviously ;)
When I still resided somewhere between Baden and Bremgarten I was recognised as "Otelfingen" (not a real surprise with a Cablecom-connection, right?).
It is maybe done on purpose. I can just imagine if they were to display one of these "pheromone-friendly" picture and pretend she's from my town or anywhere close, I would different catch the trap. Best guess, some MBA marketing told them not to.
This being
Since I changed to our own VDSL I seem to live in Therwil (BL) according to the ads. That's over two years now. And I do certainly not speak 'Baseldiitsch'.
Interesting. Then it's really true that each region of Switzerland got his own sha-encryption of the German? </welshjoke>
Hello together, I looks for a job as network Engineer. If where which is free, ask off-line contact.
Greetings Rolf
actually there's usually much more information than just country code. At least sites like http://adultfriendsfinder.com/ show my town quite precisely, and my IP is a part of a huge Cablecom pool.
Maybe there's a super-cookie left on your harddisk, from the last time you logged in ;-)
SCNR.
Rainer
Am 27.04.2010 10:15, schrieb Stefan Renner:
Is anybody of you aware, how the most popular services (Google, Zattoo, Facebook, etc) are matching geographic locations to ip-adresses ?
Our AS (41666) is located in CH, so also all the ripe objects are registered with country-code CH.
Now we have a customer located in Germany, so I created a inetnum-block with his subnet in ripe-db with country-code DE. This was a week ago. The customer is still complaining that he is constantly redirected to the swiss-versions of all the services.
Does anybody of you experienced a similar problem ? Does anybody knows proper solution ?
At the time when I was with Zattoo (until Sept. 2008) Maxmind database was used and was updated every few weeks. I don't think much has changed since then.
Check your IP block using the Maxmind database. I assume you need to assign at least a /24 to a certain country, smaller blocks will probably not be recognised.
Be patient. If the range doesn't get updated at Maxmind, write to them and ask for assistance.
Once Maxmind is up-to-date, be patient again for a few weeks, and if Zattoo is still not in sync, you may ask their support for help.
HTH, Fredy
-
Fredy Kuenzler -
Gregory Agerba -
Per Jessen -
rainer＠ultra-secure.de -
Rolf Tschumi -
Roman Hochuli -
Stanislav Sinyagin -
Stefan Renner -
Viktor Steinmann