On Wed, 22 Oct 2025, Mark Blackford via NANOG wrote:
Thank you Ben and Abdullah for joining the discussion. I understand the
balance IPinfo has to make, but hopefully what I have explained to Abdullah
on LinkedIn and your support team about the nature of hub and spoke
EVPL/NNI networks, point to point IP assignments in /31 ranges, and
automatic geofeeds from IPAM product like Netbox helps clarify how your
probes do not paint the whole Geo IP picture.
For example from my support case, an IPinfo probe in Charlotte, NC sends
data to my customer also Charlotte, but has to traverse Internet providers
to first get to my network hub in Dallas, and then make the trip over my
EVPL/NNI back to my end user in Charlotte who is the one that
needs accurate Geo IP location for content providers. I am sure this ping
time should be about twice the expected 25-30ms round trip latency expected.
Meanwhile, an IPinfo probe in Dallas pings the other end of the /31 with <
1ms latency, which is just on a gateway on a router with no users, and
simply concludes I am lying in the geofeed, the /31 must be in Dallas and
not Charlotte.
It sounds like your geofeed needs "higher resolution" if you want it to be
honest about where the IPs are in use. Instead of the /31s, break those
into /32s each at the appropriate location.
Where I work currently, we've had quite a bit of difficulty both with
stale IP Geo data on end-user systems and IP Geo providers with stale data
for a former RIPE /16 $work purchased via a broker several years ago.
Prior to this thread, I was unaware of ipinfo.io, and I was pleased to see
on their website that they allow ISPs to "register" their geofeed...so I
did that last night. I also did test lookups (another welcome feature not
all IP Geo providers provide) and found that most of what I checked was
correct, but not all. I got an email early this morning thanking me for
sharing our feed. It'll be interesting to see if/how soon it corrects
their incorrect data.
At a previous job, $work had a VPN division, and I know VPN was popular
for bypassing streaming service content restrictions based on IP Geo. We
actually did have a global network, and so we had VPN servers all around
the world. I can easily imagine a smaller VPN provider might lie in their
geofeed to try to trick IP Geo providers in essentially saying the VPN
provider has a wider footprint than they do (servers in countries where
they're really not).
I hope that doesn't keep them from trusting a broadband ISP's geofeed.
We don't provide VPN (other than for staff to be able to work) and depend
on accurate IP Geo data so that our customers get the right local channel
lineups from streaming TV services and don't get blocked from websites
that have decided to block access from "abroad".
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
Blue Stream Fiber, Sr. Neteng | therefore you are
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