Folks: We are trying to monetize some IP addresses that are temporarily not in use, and the potential customer is using a service "IP2Location" which has classified our IPs as data center, rather than ISP. I wrote to "support@" twice with not even an acknowledgement. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get through to them? I don't know how/why IP2Location suddenly got so important, but if they're going to play a role in the Internet ecosystem, the least they can do is acknowledge messages sent to their official support email address. But I guess this is just the latest in a very long list of organizations who seem to be important glue (at least to some people) but who are not acting responsibly. Anyway: anyone from IP2Location here? Anyone have any good contacts there? Any advice on how to get them to update? Thanks as always, jms ------ Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Senior Partner, Opus One Phone: +1 520 324 0494 jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms
Use this... Geo & VPN Resources | The Brothers WISP https://share.google/MurAfAoUKF8Yhocs1 On Fri, Oct 23, 2026, 5:39 AM Joel M Snyder via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Folks:
We are trying to monetize some IP addresses that are temporarily not in use, and the potential customer is using a service "IP2Location" which has classified our IPs as data center, rather than ISP. I wrote to "support@" twice with not even an acknowledgement. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get through to them?
I don't know how/why IP2Location suddenly got so important, but if they're going to play a role in the Internet ecosystem, the least they can do is acknowledge messages sent to their official support email address. But I guess this is just the latest in a very long list of organizations who seem to be important glue (at least to some people) but who are not acting responsibly.
Anyway: anyone from IP2Location here? Anyone have any good contacts there? Any advice on how to get them to update?
Thanks as always,
jms ------ Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Senior Partner, Opus One Phone: +1 520 324 0494 jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/SJQNA5BH...
On 23 October 2026 11:38:43 CEST, Joel M Snyder via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Folks:
We are trying to monetize some IP addresses that are temporarily not in use, and the potential customer is using a service "IP2Location" which has classified our IPs as data center, rather than ISP. I wrote to "support@" twice with not even an acknowledgement. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get through to them?
I don't know how/why IP2Location suddenly got so important, but if they're going to play a role in the Internet ecosystem, the least they can do is acknowledge messages sent to their official support email address. But I guess this is just the latest in a very long list of organizations who seem to be important glue (at least to some people) but who are not acting responsibly.
Anyway: anyone from IP2Location here? Anyone have any good contacts there? Any advice on how to get them to update?
Thanks as always,
jms ------ Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Senior Partner, Opus One Phone: +1 520 324 0494 jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/SJQNA5BH...
Important note: Since you are trying to "monetize IP addresses" it is clear that IP2Location has the right idea about how these IP addresses are being used, and is, in fact, acting responsibly. The purpose of these IP information companies (and there are lots) is precisely to determine when an ISP is lying about what their addresses are being used for. Good luck convincing them to fall for the lie. Kevin.
On Oct 23, 2026, at 19:13, Kevin Tillery via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
On 23 October 2026 11:38:43 CEST, Joel M Snyder via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Folks:
We are trying to monetize some IP addresses that are temporarily not in use, and the potential customer is using a service "IP2Location" which has classified our IPs as data center, rather than ISP. I wrote to "support@" twice with not even an acknowledgement. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get through to them?
I don't know how/why IP2Location suddenly got so important, but if they're going to play a role in the Internet ecosystem, the least they can do is acknowledge messages sent to their official support email address. But I guess this is just the latest in a very long list of organizations who seem to be important glue (at least to some people) but who are not acting responsibly.
Anyway: anyone from IP2Location here? Anyone have any good contacts there? Any advice on how to get them to update?
[…]
Important note: Since you are trying to "monetize IP addresses" it is clear that IP2Location has the right idea about how these IP addresses are being used, and is, in fact, acting responsibly.
The purpose of these IP information companies (and there are lots) is precisely to determine when an ISP is lying about what their addresses are being used for. Good luck convincing them to fall for the lie.
1) I think Joel was talking about them not answering email to support@, which I would also consider irresponsible. Interesting that you think that is responsible. Does your company ignore requests to support@? 2) Joel said the IP addresses are not in use. Not sure why listing them as “datacenter” is correct. Nor am I certain why asking them to change that is a “lie”. 3) Why do think Joel is lying? Maybe he is lying, but I have no evidence to that effect. Do you frequently accuse people of lying without showing any evidence? Seems a bit “irresponsible” to me. -- TTFN, patrick
On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 4:13 PM Kevin Tillery via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote: [...]
Important note: Since you are trying to "monetize IP addresses" it is clear that IP2Location has the right idea about how these IP addresses are being used, and is, in fact, acting responsibly.
The purpose of these IP information companies (and there are lots) is precisely to determine when an ISP is lying about what their addresses are being used for. Good luck convincing them to fall for the lie.
Kevin.
Hi Kevin, This *is* you, right? https://www.immibis.com/blog/dn42-redesign-202602 I note you have a collection of VPS instances around the globe, over which you run an encrypted set of tunnels, and offer BGP transit to people over those encrypted tunnels. https://www.immibis.com/dn42/peeringhttps://www.immibis.com/dn42/peering - If you expect to transfer 1000 GB/month or more please inform me when making the connection. This would be unusual for dn42 at the moment, but it's possible. Just inform me so I can make sure there's enough capacity. Have you informed your VPS providers that you are using their VPS nodes to offer encrypted transit to people who are not otherwise normally connected through their network? Are you potentially putting your VPS providers into a situation where their IPs are not being used for the purposes they thought they were, where one might almost be tempted to accuse them of lying about what their IP addresses are being used for? Are you perhaps standing in a glass house, flinging stones at others? ... The Internet is useful precisely because it is such a swiss army knife that it can be used for purposes we could not even have dreamt of back in the early days. To think that we could codify and lock into carefully curated buckets all the possible uses for IP addresses is, dare I say, a potentially vain and shortsighted effort? As Hamlet once wisely said, "There are more valid and reasonable uses for IP addresses, Kevin, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Mind you, I wasn't actually there when he said it, but I have it on good authority from my friend Bill, who was.) I wish Joel all the best in getting IP2Location to respond to his repeated queries. As someone who wrestled for decades with getting geolocation providers to update information, I know it is a gruelling task that would make even Sisyphus reconsider before applying for a lateral job change. Alas, I have no better resource to offer for reaching them than what Josh has already provided. Best of luck, Joel! Matt
Dn42 isn't public internet transit/public internet peering, so is irrelevant to this discussion. Think of it as a private BGP/networking playground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dn42 It doesn't provide public internet IP transit, and for 'real' internet access from the virtual dn42 network, you'd need to have some kind of NAT gateways and other such things with legs on both sides. It operates on RFC1918 space and all services/functionality is 'internal' to this virtual network unless dual homed. Therefore, is entirely irrelevant to this discussion, not providing any public internet type peering/transit or IP space other than what you gateway into it on your own. I've got a bit of experience with ChaosVPN and dn42. Think of it as a big private VPN network on RFC1918 space, because, essentially, that's all it is - WITH NO PUBLIC BGP PEERING OR ADDRESS SPACE. It's a learning/experimenting tool that by nature and design CANNOT PROVIDE PUBLIC IP / PEERING / TRANSIT. -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Petach via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Sent: Friday, October 23, 2026 8:07 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> Subject: Re: IP2Location updates possible? On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 4:13 PM Kevin Tillery via NANOG < nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote: [...]
Important note: Since you are trying to "monetize IP addresses" it is clear that IP2Location has the right idea about how these IP addresses are being used, and is, in fact, acting responsibly.
The purpose of these IP information companies (and there are lots) is precisely to determine when an ISP is lying about what their addresses are being used for. Good luck convincing them to fall for the lie.
Kevin.
Hi Kevin, This *is* you, right? https://www.immibis.com/blog/dn42-redesign-202602 I note you have a collection of VPS instances around the globe, over which you run an encrypted set of tunnels, and offer BGP transit to people over those encrypted tunnels. https://www.immibis.com/dn42/peeringhttps://www.immibis.com/dn42/peering - If you expect to transfer 1000 GB/month or more please inform me when making the connection. This would be unusual for dn42 at the moment, but it's possible. Just inform me so I can make sure there's enough capacity. Have you informed your VPS providers that you are using their VPS nodes to offer encrypted transit to people who are not otherwise normally connected through their network? Are you potentially putting your VPS providers into a situation where their IPs are not being used for the purposes they thought they were, where one might almost be tempted to accuse them of lying about what their IP addresses are being used for? Are you perhaps standing in a glass house, flinging stones at others? ... The Internet is useful precisely because it is such a swiss army knife that it can be used for purposes we could not even have dreamt of back in the early days. To think that we could codify and lock into carefully curated buckets all the possible uses for IP addresses is, dare I say, a potentially vain and shortsighted effort? As Hamlet once wisely said, "There are more valid and reasonable uses for IP addresses, Kevin, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Mind you, I wasn't actually there when he said it, but I have it on good authority from my friend Bill, who was.) I wish Joel all the best in getting IP2Location to respond to his repeated queries. As someone who wrestled for decades with getting geolocation providers to update information, I know it is a gruelling task that would make even Sisyphus reconsider before applying for a lateral job change. Alas, I have no better resource to offer for reaching them than what Josh has already provided. Best of luck, Joel! Matt _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/ALCOHC6J...
On Sat, 24 Oct 2026, Kevin Tillery via NANOG wrote:
On 23 October 2026 11:38:43 CEST, Joel M Snyder via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Folks:
We are trying to monetize some IP addresses that are temporarily not in use, and the potential customer is using a service "IP2Location" which has classified our IPs as data center, rather than ISP. I wrote to "support@" twice with not even an acknowledgement. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get through to them?
I don't know how/why IP2Location suddenly got so important, but if they're going to play a role in the Internet ecosystem, the least they can do is acknowledge messages sent to their official support email address. But I guess this is just the latest in a very long list of organizations who seem to be important glue (at least to some people) but who are not acting responsibly.
Anyway: anyone from IP2Location here? Anyone have any good contacts there? Any advice on how to get them to update?
Thanks as always,
jms
Important note: Since you are trying to "monetize IP addresses" it is clear that IP2Location has the right idea about how these IP addresses are being used, and is, in fact, acting responsibly.
The purpose of these IP information companies (and there are lots) is precisely to determine when an ISP is lying about what their addresses are being used for. Good luck convincing them to fall for the lie.
Why would you assume Joel is lying and "data center use" is the only way to monetize spare IPs? I think it's just as, if not more, likely he's looking at leasing the IPs to an ISP, and that ISP is trying to do some due diligence and not rent IPs that are going to cause customer complaints due to incorrect IP Geo data. Coincidentally, IP2Location is one of the several IP Geo providers (aka snake oil salesmen) I dealt with when $work was having major IP Geo issues due to having purchased a RIPE /16 (for use by broadband Internet subscribers in Florida) before I started here. Allegedly, for IP2Location, all you need to do to fix this is publish a geofeed: https://blog.ip2location.com/knowledge-base/what-is-geofeed/ IIRC, IP2Location is one of the IP Geo providers who sells IP Geo data consumed via bulk file transfer. That makes it highly likely that you'll eventually find someone "using" IP2Location data that's stale (i.e. They setup an automated process [or didn't], and the credit card they were paying IP2Location with expired, so the automated process broke [lost access to download fresh data], but nobody noticed.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route Blue Stream Fiber, Sr. Neteng | therefore you are _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 5:16 PM Gary Sparkes <gary@kisaracorporation.com> wrote:
Dn42 isn't public internet transit/public internet peering, so is irrelevant to this discussion.
Think of it as a private BGP/networking playground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dn42
It doesn't provide public internet IP transit, and for 'real' internet access from the virtual dn42 network, you'd need to have some kind of NAT gateways and other such things with legs on both sides.
It operates on RFC1918 space and all services/functionality is 'internal' to this virtual network unless dual homed.
Therefore, is entirely irrelevant to this discussion, not providing any public internet type peering/transit or IP space other than what you gateway into it on your own. I've got a bit of experience with ChaosVPN and dn42.
Think of it as a big private VPN network on RFC1918 space, because, essentially, that's all it is - WITH NO PUBLIC BGP PEERING OR ADDRESS SPACE.
It's a learning/experimenting tool that by nature and design CANNOT PROVIDE PUBLIC IP / PEERING / TRANSIT.
I am truly sorry for taking up everyone's time with my clearly embarrassing message. Clearly, it is impossible to have data move from point A to point Z over private IP space, through multiple intervening networks, completely within an overlay network on top of the existing internet without ever touching the real internet address space. It was silly of me to think that if I connected to dn42 in one part of the planet from a server that happened to have several hundred TB of local storage, and established the right peering sessions, I could transmit the data from those disks to a different host halfway around the planet, also connected to dn42 with the right peering sessions established, that wanted to consume that data, all over the private IP overlay network, without ever using public IP addresses. I see now the folly of my thinking, and I now understand that data can only pass across the internet if it is properly associated with public IP addresses. My insane concept of passing data from one host to another via an encrypted overlay network using only RFC1918 addresses was clearly the result of insufficient sleep from patching and upgrading too many PHP servers this week. Thank you for setting me straight. I will stop wasting everyone's time with my clearly impossible scenarios. Thank you again for your patience and understanding as I learn from the collected wisdom here. Matt
OK, so it's an illegitimate use of a VPS, just like using it as a VPN concentrator or a file transfer service...., Wait, those are legitimate uses, oh.... -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Petach via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Sent: Friday, October 23, 2026 10:41 PM To: Gary Sparkes <gary@kisaracorporation.com> Cc: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org>; Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> Subject: Re: IP2Location updates possible? On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 5:16 PM Gary Sparkes <gary@kisaracorporation.com> wrote:
Dn42 isn't public internet transit/public internet peering, so is irrelevant to this discussion.
Think of it as a private BGP/networking playground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dn42
It doesn't provide public internet IP transit, and for 'real' internet access from the virtual dn42 network, you'd need to have some kind of NAT gateways and other such things with legs on both sides.
It operates on RFC1918 space and all services/functionality is 'internal' to this virtual network unless dual homed.
Therefore, is entirely irrelevant to this discussion, not providing any public internet type peering/transit or IP space other than what you gateway into it on your own. I've got a bit of experience with ChaosVPN and dn42.
Think of it as a big private VPN network on RFC1918 space, because, essentially, that's all it is - WITH NO PUBLIC BGP PEERING OR ADDRESS SPACE.
It's a learning/experimenting tool that by nature and design CANNOT PROVIDE PUBLIC IP / PEERING / TRANSIT.
I am truly sorry for taking up everyone's time with my clearly embarrassing message. Clearly, it is impossible to have data move from point A to point Z over private IP space, through multiple intervening networks, completely within an overlay network on top of the existing internet without ever touching the real internet address space. It was silly of me to think that if I connected to dn42 in one part of the planet from a server that happened to have several hundred TB of local storage, and established the right peering sessions, I could transmit the data from those disks to a different host halfway around the planet, also connected to dn42 with the right peering sessions established, that wanted to consume that data, all over the private IP overlay network, without ever using public IP addresses. I see now the folly of my thinking, and I now understand that data can only pass across the internet if it is properly associated with public IP addresses. My insane concept of passing data from one host to another via an encrypted overlay network using only RFC1918 addresses was clearly the result of insufficient sleep from patching and upgrading too many PHP servers this week. Thank you for setting me straight. I will stop wasting everyone's time with my clearly impossible scenarios. Thank you again for your patience and understanding as I learn from the collected wisdom here. Matt _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/DNWMMCL4...
On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 8:16 PM Gary Sparkes via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Dn42 isn't public internet transit/public internet peering, so is irrelevant to this discussion.
Hi Gary, I think you missed Patrick's point, which was NOT that there was anything remotely inappropriate with Kevin's use. Rather, it was that Kevin was behaving like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. That Kevin had no just cause to suggest or even think Joel was dissembling. Even though Joel most unfortunately made public use of the words "monetize" and "IP addresses" in a positive light. Regards, Bill Herrin -- For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/
Fair enough, sorry about that there confusion then. I read the undercurrent as something along the lines of the insinuations being using address space with false location to circumvent things or similar, and was pointing out that the example pointed at wasn't anything remotely like that, so didn't seem relevant. That was my misunderstanding, so yea, definitely my fault on that. Sorry! -----Original Message----- From: William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2026 6:28 PM To: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@lists.nanog.org> Cc: Gary Sparkes <gary@kisaracorporation.com> Subject: Re: IP2Location updates possible? On Fri, Oct 23, 2026 at 8:16 PM Gary Sparkes via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
Dn42 isn't public internet transit/public internet peering, so is irrelevant to this discussion.
Hi Gary, I think you missed Patrick's point, which was NOT that there was anything remotely inappropriate with Kevin's use. Rather, it was that Kevin was behaving like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black. That Kevin had no just cause to suggest or even think Joel was dissembling. Even though Joel most unfortunately made public use of the words "monetize" and "IP addresses" in a positive light. Regards, Bill Herrin -- For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/
participants (8)
-
Gary Sparkes -
Joel M Snyder -
Jon Lewis -
Josh Luthman -
Kevin Tillery -
Matthew Petach -
Patrick W. Gilmore -
William Herrin