Gary Sparkes wrote:
I work for IPinfo. We use active measurements for IP geolocation as a primary source of data. We consider geofeeds as a second-tier source of information. We use it as a fallback data source when active measurements fail. And for a lot of my users/systems/address ranges, you will be entirely incorrect using those measurements.
Let's say your measuring endpoint is in Baltimore. Let's say I'm announcing out of Raleigh for whatever reason.
Let's say the end users of that ... ah, let's say, /24, are all in Baltimore, and that range is only used for Baltimore people.
Are you going to pin me in NC (incorrect) or Baltimore (correct, as my geofeed publishes)?
Or in the case of a /24 that's used as an endpoint for a facility in Boston, but can be announced out of Houston, Los Angeles, or Ashburn depending on the failover scenario, my geofeed publishes that range as Boston, not any of those three cities, because that's where the users and end network actually is.
So geolocation provider data is horribly inaccurate when it comes to the end-site's actual location for that address range.
Same I've seen with other places, as well.
-----Original Message----- From: Mike via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2026 12:11 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: Mike <deezknuts@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Geofeeds are good — was Re: Publishing BGP communties for your network (Re: What's up with BGP communities?)
In fact, geolocation providers should be using geofeed data as tier 1 data since they are self published. Are you saying you know more about my prefixes than me? On Tuesday, January 27, 2026 at 07:03:45 AM PST, Ca By via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:47 PM Abdullah DevRel of IPinfo via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Geofeeds are useful because they cut out the middleman in terms of geo info, and provide a mechanism for someone to detect and react to that change quickly, since a very large use case for these is targeted content and advertising. I work for IPinfo. We use active measurements for IP geolocation as a primary source of data. We consider geofeeds as a second-tier source of information. We use it as a fallback data source when active measurements fail. The honest reality is that geofeed does not provide verification metadata of any form. The “honest reality”, as you say, is that geolocation firms like yours have failed to provide reliable data to paying customers for years.
That is why the IETF made geofeeds.
My customers started having outages because geolocation firms have bad data, and enterprises use that bad data in firewall and cdn rules which cause outages. For example, geolocation firms provide data that a customer IP is in xyz country but the firewall rules only allow abc country…
Anyhow, as a person who publishes geofeed data representing 100s of millions of users, please …everyone… publish and consume first party geofeed data and do not listen to FUD from people trying to sell you the same data that we publish for free.
They can be stale, wrong, or false, and maintaining them is a pain for ASN
providers. Many large telecoms do not even have publicly accessible geofeed. For example, AS11260 (Eastlink.ca) does not have a publicly accessible geofeed to my knowledge, and I am not sure who to reach out to get one. Not all ASNs are going to publish geofeeds, and it is fine. Providing IP geolocation data has real value, and I do not believe it is the ASN or ISP's responsibility to have their data accurately reflected on third-party IP geolocation providers like us. The ideal operation that we have is this: we do IP geolocation based on building networks of servers running active measurements, working with ASNs, attending conferences and talking with as many ASNs and range operators as possible. Shake as many hands as possible. It sounds borderline impossible, but honestly, that is the only fair way to operate as an IP geolocation provider. If, in any case, an ASN does not want to help us, that is fine, but that does not excuse negligence on our part towards end users. Our responsibility is towards end users (the customers of ASNs; internet users) and ASNs can be just voluntary partners. The moment an ASN, ISP, or an end user has an issue, we have to jump into the conversation and fix the issue. That is why I am here. There is a mention of the word "geolocation" in the NANOG forum, and we have to come here and ask if everything is okay. Do you have any issues with us? Can you check your data with us? Can you help us fix the issue? This MO of IP geolocation as a service should be: aggressive outreach. But we also have to admit that we are not the only provider, and we are not even the largest provider out there. But we do not care, we have to be responsible to everyone. We have to back our data. — Abdullah | DevRel, IPinfo https://www.linkedin.com/in/reincoder/ _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/SD OEDEZ7UUM4FZNHQJQBFCIR4W3HEP2X/
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If we are providing inaccurate data for you, please talk to us. Please understand that our active measurement has inherent fail-safe mechanisms. When the data is noisy, we will fail over to geofeed. We collect ping and traceroute data for IP addresses through servers hosted in various cities. We will not accept noisy data to generate IP geolocation data just because. The entire idea is based on a verifiability hierarchy. If a customer asks why an IP address is located in a certain place, we can show them our ping data, traceroute data, etc. If we see an average of 20ms+ RTT (for example) to the IP address, we will not use that to produce the IP geolocation data. That is not justifiable evidence for the geolocation. Then we can fall back on the geofeed data and state that the IP address operators/owners announced that the IP address is located there. Geofeed is great as a fallback data source but it is not our primary source of data. Let me know what you think, please. Thank you very much. — Abdullah | DevRel, IPinfo