Re: Geofeeds are adversarial ??? was Re: Geofeeds are good

[Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

> DNS routing of users to the closest server in cases anycast is not doable
> or too expensive.
>
> Fighting abuse, a user claiming is from the USA, with a UK credit card and
> an IP resolved to China should at bare minimum be reviewed by a human.
>
> And of course there's plenty of legislation requiring the proper
> identification of user location to either require a local VAT number, show
> cookie banners, block adult content access and more.


IP geolocation is *part of* the solution to these issues, but it's far from
the only one. These days IP geolocation is one of multiple signals used to
handle these cases, mostly because everyone has realized over the years
that the accuracy is poor enough that they cannot rely solely on it.

So I don't really get the outrage here.


It's not outrage, but it's definitely frustration.

A 3rd party collects information about our networks, and sells that data to
others. They don't have to be **CORRECT**, they just have to be **GOOD
ENOUGH**.  When they make mistakes, **WE** have to deal with the issues
that causes, and **WE** have to get it fixed.

Should be pretty clear why people get annoyed by this.

On Mon, Feb 16, 2026 at 8:28 AM Dmitriy A. via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
wrote:

> I'm sorry but there are lots of use cases that require accurate IP
> geolocation.
>
> DNS routing of users to the closest server in cases anycast is not doable
> or too expensive.
>
> Fighting abuse, a user claiming is from the USA, with a UK credit card and
> an IP resolved to China should at bare minimum be reviewed by a human.
>
> And of course there's plenty of legislation requiring the proper
> identification of user location to either require a local VAT number, show
> cookie banners, block adult content access and more.
>
> And hundreds more...
>
> I've looked into using geofeeds directly internally for some projects but
> most networks are not covered, or don't provide them to randoms like me or
> some outright lie to sell SEO IPs or charge more for rare hosting locations
> without having to actually have infrastructure there.
>
> So I don't really get the outrage here.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2026, 14:16 Rich Kulawiec via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org
> >
> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Feb 15, 2026 at 10:25:56PM -0800, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:
> > > Personally, I???ve always thought that IP Geolocation was a bad idea
> > > and nothing I???ve seen in the usage of it to date has changed my mind.
> >
> > Agree.  We've spent decades trying to build a network that allows
> everyone
> > to access everything independent of geographical location, and now people
> > have come along with broken business models which demand that we abandon
> > this fundamental principle of the Internet in order to accomodate them.
> >
> > ---rsk
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