Joe, On Aug 23, 2025, at 11:22 AM, Joe Greco via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 02:08:12PM -0400, Josh Luthman via NANOG wrote:
Why is content different based on source IP? Who cares? It's not relevant to NANOG. If someone wants to send one HTTP response body to geographic addresses in the nothern hemisphere and a different HTTP response body, that's fine.
The problem is the assumed binding of <IP address, geographic address> in the “northern hemisphere” or wherever. This has never been guaranteed, has always been questionable, and, historically, was actively discouraged, at least by the RIRs (“the Internet does not use geopolitical boundaries for address allocation”, handwaving away the RIR geographical monopolies). The problem, as I think you pointed out earlier, is that various parties, for good or ill, need there to be an <IP,geo> binding, even if it doesn’t really exist, so using what information they have, they make it up as they go along. Sometimes (usually) it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t. The crux is that, when it doesn’t, the mechanisms to fix the binding, such as they are, sucks and the people who are impacted (i.e., end users) are typically, the least capable of figuring out what the problem is, so they complain to the ISPs, hence the relevance to NANOG. Regards, -drc