On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:50:47 -0000 Abdullah DevRel of IPinfo via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
We operate 1320 servers around the world using a small VPS [...] we built our own system which involves buying hosting services directly with ASNs/ISPs to allow us to provide good data for the ASN. As far as everyone is concerned, paying for the server is the best mutually financially beneficial situation you can imagine.
I know and use many of the small VPS providers you do. A few $5/month servers isn't a lot of business, and I'd wager those providers are rarely the ones with the most interest in using or buying the geoip data unless maybe they are VPN providers? Isn't it the content and eyeball networks, plus enterprise and security groups that are the primary users of this data? If so, the relationships are asymmetrically triangular if you will. There are (a) geoip data providers, (b) geoip data users/buyers, and (c) networks in the middle that bear much of the cost of what a and c are doing. I'm surely coming off as more adversarial than I really intend. I appreciate what you are trying to do, and especially communicating with netops in good faith. These sorts of triangular relationships exist all over and I'm hopefully being clear and helpful in pointing out the asymmetry and challenge of them. John