On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 4:58 PM, Constantine A. Murenin <mureninc@gmail.com> wrote:
I've had a Linode in Fremont, CA (within 173.230.144.0/20 and 2600:3c01::/32) for over a year, and, in addition to some development, I sometimes use it as an ssh-based personal SOCKS-proxy when travelling and having to use any kind of public WiFi.
Since doing so, I have noticed that most geolocation services think that I'm located in NJ (the state of the corporate headquarters of Linode), instead of Northern California (where my Linode is physically from, and, coincidentally or not, where I also happen to live, hence renting a Linode from a very specific location).
If you care about geolocation of your IP addresses, submit that information to the geolocation services. For the $20/month you're paying Linode (or do you have the expensive account?), why would they care about geolocation?
Additionally, it seems like both yelp.com and retailmenot.com block the whole 173.230.144.0/20 from their web-sites, returning some graphical "403 Forbidden" pages instead.
At a glance, I'd bet this has more to do with Linode being a VPS provider (not an eyeball network) than anything else. Despite everything VPS service providers do to prevent it, they do get abused by folks attempting every sort of fraud imaginable. As they're not an eyeball network, the fraud to not-fraud ratio of eyeball activities is not ideal.
This would seem like a possible shortcoming of ARIN's policies and the whois database: with RIPE, every `netname` has a `country` associated with it, seemingly without any requirements of a mailing address where mail could be received; but with ARIN, no state is ever provided, only a mailing address. (I've also just noticed that RIPE whois now has an optional `geoloc` field in addition to the non-optional `country`.)
Now, back to ARIN: is Linode doing it right? Is vr.org doing it wrong? Are they both doing it correct, or are they both wrong?
They are both correct. ARIN allows address holders to SWIP down to whatever level they want, but only requires them to SWIP assignments of /29 or more addresses. Some service providers prefer that abuse be immediately the subscriber's problem, so they put the info in the whois system. Others come down on the side of keeping their customer database out of the hands of competitors, so they publish the minimum required information. In both cases, the smaller the account the less willing they are to deviate from the corporate standard.
Anyhow. How do I get my geoloc to show Fremont, CA? And to have yelp stop returning 403 Forbidden?
Contact customer support. Tell them you're blocked. Ask them not to block you. Same as you would for any encounter where the service provider has blocked your source address. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004