Re: Geofeeds are adversarial — was Re: Geofeeds are good

[Laszlo H via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

You keep talking about probe servers and how accurate the data is, but 
the whole approach is arbitrary and adversarial toward ISPs. You're 
undermining what people publish, trying to convince the world that 
they're all liars except you, and building an illusion that it's 
possible to determine the location of an IP with technical solutions so 
you can sell it.

The same way that hostile actors want to locate users (not IPs) in order 
to block them, users want a virtual presence in another country to evade 
those blocks, and one of your goals is to prevent that from working and 
to make money while doing it.  It's walls and ladders and you're selling 
walls.  This causes endless problems for everybody involved and whatever 
profits are earned from this don't go back to the affected users and 
operators - it just increases the cost for everybody.

Operators have to dance around this geo location business any time we 
deal with IP addresses and it only helps the people selling the databases.

-Laszlo


On 2/15/26 7:02 AM, Abdullah DevRel of IPinfo via NANOG wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > Neither the end user nor the ISP has any way to know that IPinfo is at fault. Neither party knows that IPinfo even 
> > exists.
> You are right. IP geolocation should be invisible. Our approach fundamentally relies on the fact data is so good, we do 
> not even exist. But the issue is that even with a million probe servers, IP geolocation can never be fully accurate in 
> real time. How do we address the issue?
>
> > Your contractual relationship is only with the media distributor, and so is the end user's, and the ISP only had a 
> > contractual relationship with the end user.
> For our enterprise customers, we have established multi-channel escalation processes. I can describe what this looks 
> like using Cloudflare as an example, since they are the largest internet company in the world:
>
> - Cloudflare's support and product teams have direct communication channels with our engineering and support teams.
> - Issues are escalated to us through automated processes.
> - Their community moderators and MVP users are aware of us and can flag issues directly.
>
> In the Cloudflare community, we see roughly one issue per month that involves our data, and most of those require 
> explanation rather than correction.
>
> Example: https://community.cloudflare.com/search?q=ipinfo%20order%3Alatest
>
> Please understand that is Cloudflare and all their scale.
>
> OPNsense adopted our data as well. We made it clear to them that IP geolocation accuracy is our responsibility, not 
> theirs. The issues I have seen in their forums have been cases requiring investigation and explanation, not systematic 
> data failures: https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?action=ipinfo
>
> Our accountability extends beyond paying customers to include users accessing our free data - IPinfo Lite (Country + 
> ASN). We are actively reaching out to firewall companies to encourage them to adopt our free data, because end-users 
> often experience frustration due to inaccurate IP geolocation data services. So, we are willing to provide our data for 
> free in order to support their end-users.
>
> > You are saying end users must inform you, but they don't know you exist. You are saying ISPs must inform you, but they 
> > mostly don't know you exist.
> I am not saying either must inform us.
>
> For end users: our enterprise customers are instructed to maintain an escalation process. When an end user reports a 
> location issue, the customer identifies whether it is an IP geolocation problem and forwards it to us through an 
> automated channel. We investigate and resolve or explain within 24 hours. The end user does not need to know we exist 
> for this to work.
>
> For ISPs: this is the reason we invested in active measurement rather than relying exclusively on geofeeds. Many ISPs 
> do not publish geofeeds, do not maintain them, and do not know which IP geolocation providers are serving data about 
> their prefixes. We chose to build a system that does not depend on ISP participation to produce accurate data. When 
> ISPs do engage with us, it helps. But their participation is voluntary, not required.
>
> Again, we appreciate all the ISPs for their due diligence and effort to keep their geofeed.
>
> > And when an ISP does inform you, you push back on them, saying you trust the probe network more than the ISP.
> When our active measurement data conflicts with a geofeed or an ISP correction, we investigate. If the ISP's 
> information is more accurate, we fall back to their geofeed and increase its priority score in our system to avoid the same 
> issue recurring. This is not pushback — it is a verification step.
>
> > If you think media distributors must inform the end user to contact you first in the event of an IP geolocation 
> > problem, you must write that into your contracts with them.
> We do not require end users to contact us. The escalation path is: end user contacts the service provider, the service 
> provider's support identifies an IP geolocation issue, and it is forwarded to us. This is part of our operational 
> process with enterprise customers.
>
> Again, you are absolutely not required to talk to us. Nobody is required to talk to us. And the only path towards that 
> on a systematic and macro level is active measurement.
>
> Our data is getting more granular and accurate. It is a continuous investment. We are only limited by how universal 
> adoption of our data has been.
>
> ISPs, end users, network operators who are not our direct customers — we monitor public forums daily. This includes 
> NANOG, Reddit (https://old.reddit.com/user/reincdr/), Hacker News, and customer community platforms for services that 
> use our data. When someone has a complaint about IP geolocation, even if it is not specifically about us, we 
> investigate. That is how we entered this thread. The original discussion was about BGP communities, not about us.
>
> > You say you are trying to distance yourselves from the rest of the industry, but you are only saying this with your 
> > words, not showing it with your actions.
> I understand that perspective. Here is what we are doing:
>
> - We maintain public presence in operator forums and respond to complaints, including complaints that are not directed 
> at us.
> - We have a self-serve correction portal: https://ipinfo.io/corrections
> - We have a support channel: https://ipinfo.io/support
> - We are expanding ProbeNet to improve measurement accuracy so that fewer issues arise in the first place.
> - When our data is wrong and an ISP or end user flags it, we fall back to geofeed data and adjust the priority scoring 
> to prevent recurrence.
>
> I acknowledge that forum monitoring is not the same as systematic routing of complaints. We are working on improving 
> discoverability. If you have specific suggestions on how we can make it easier for affected parties to reach us, we are 
> genuinely interested.
>
> — Abdullah | DevRel, IPinfo
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