Geographical location haywire!

Mel_P

Mel_P

Mel_P

Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2004
Posts
2,577
Location
Kent
I looked up a shop and it told me my local branch was in Edinburgh - despite living in Maidstone!

Humm I thought - I looked up my "WAN" address on my Virginmedia (cable) router - then put this
into https://tools.keycdn.com/ - IP location finder and it tells me that I am in Edinburgh!

Crazy!

Can somebody else in Maidstone do the same please? Thanks
 
Mel_P said:
I looked up a shop and it told me my local branch was in Edinburgh - despite living in Maidstone!

Humm I thought - I looked up my "WAN" address on my Virginmedia (cable) router - then put this
into https://tools.keycdn.com/ - IP location finder and it tells me that I am in Edinburgh!

Crazy!

Can somebody else in Maidstone do the same please? Thanks
Click to expand...

Scroll down on that page a bit and you'll see an explanation of how Geo IP location works - better than I can attempt to explain anyway.

It's unfeasible (and an unreasonable expectation) for ISPs to provide customers with an IP address that matches their (approximate) location due a number of reasons;
-how frequently dynamic IP addresses are assigned and unassigned from customers.
-how limited IP addresses are - i.e. they couldnt "reserve a pool for maidstone" for example.
-some ISPs employ CGNAT which means you could be on the same IP address as somebody else


The larger Geo IP databases (including Google) only pull data from ISPs or accept corrections every 2 to 4 weeks.
IP Address Geo Location should only really be used to determine the country the user is visiting from.

Good websites will pull other data to determine your location, i.e. https://www.gps-coordinates.net/my-location will likely be a bit more accurate.
For example that one is almost the same street and I'm connected to a VPN that has a Geo IP location of London (I live 120 miles away).
 
WoodyUK said:
IP Address Geo Location should only really be used to determine the country the user is visiting from.
Click to expand...

Even that's not 100% reliable. Hyperoptic bought a bunch of IPv4 addresses from an ISP somewhere in Eastern Europe (I forget where) and anyone that was using one of those newly acquired IP addresses was detected as being from the original country rather than the UK. That's a bit of an extreme example though, they're generally reliable enough to pinpoint the country.
 
BUT its always been ok up untill now - suddenly changed - web sites direct me to their Edinburgh branch - not "Keep Local" in covid terms!
 
It's completely normal that the location will change, it'll depend on where your ISP are actually sending your traffic out to the internet.

You may not have noticed but I'm sure that at some times your location will have shown as something other than Maidstone.
 
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