Geo & VPN Resources

What is IP geolocation?

It’s the process of associating a location with an IP address.

What problems can arise?

If a website has incorrect geolocation information, it could be as harmless as showing you weather for a different area to as disruptive as blocking you from the site.

What is a VPN?

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. Traditionally, it was used for workers to connect back to the office so they could access business resources, no matter where they were.

How are VPNs a problem?

People can use VPNs to get around IP geolocation-based restrictions. If you’re in the USA and wanting to use the BBC iPlayer in the UK, you can VPN to the UK and access it from there. Websites have picked up on this and started blocking ALL VPN-sourced traffic. A variety of methods are used to “determine” if you’re likely to be coming from a VPN. There are, however, false-positives.

What can one do about these issues?

There are many databases and many contact methods used to determine, track, and remediate this information. We’ve attempted to provide a listing of the information you need to fix these issues. It is, of course, incomplete.

RIR Information

Make sure that the information on your blocks at your RIR is correct. Different RIRs have different methods for this information, so we won’t document them all here. We’ll just provide links to the RIRs. Login to your accounts and make sure your information is correct. If your blocks aren’t there, get them SWIPed to you. If you can’t get them SWIPed to you, you’ll have to hope other methods work for you.

• ARINNorth America
• LACNICLatin and Southern America
• RIPEEurope, Middle East, and Central Asia
• AFRINICAfrica
• APNICAsia/Pacific

Geo Feeds

You can also host a Geo Feed if you have a website. RFC 8805 describes this, but a step-by-step guide exists on IPRegistry’s site and slightly more technical detail on ipapi.com’s geolocation page.

Note: it’s really simple — you make an edit to your IRR information pointing to a .csv file on your website and then put the correctly formatted .csv file in the root directory of your website. You can verify that your Geo Feed is correctly formatted here: OpenGeoFeed.org/validator

The main advantage here is that you can dynamically update allocations/locations without having to bombard 20 different providers. That said it’s not 100% and some IP Location providers don’t listen, but if more ISPs have this simple system set up with good data, then more IP Location providers will listen.

Geolocation Database Providers

These companies provide geolocation information to many customers. Going through this list is a good second step.

Site-specific Information