Re: Geofeeds are good — was Re: Publishing BGP communties for your network (Re: What's up with BGP communities?)

[Warren Kumari via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 10:03 AM, Ca By <nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:47 PM Abdullah DevRel of IPinfo via NANOG <
> nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:
>
> Geofeeds are useful because they cut out the middleman in terms of geo
>
> info, and provide a mechanism for someone to detect and react to that
> change quickly, since a very large use case for these is targeted content
> and advertising.
>
> I work for IPinfo. We use active measurements for IP geolocation as a
> primary source of data. We consider geofeeds as a second-tier source of
> information. We use it as a fallback data source when active measurements
> fail.
>
> The honest reality is that geofeed does not provide verification metadata
> of any form.
>
> The “honest reality”, as you say, is that geolocation firms like yours
> have failed to provide reliable data to paying customers for years.
>
> That is why the IETF made geofeeds.
>
> My customers started having outages because geolocation firms have bad
> data, and enterprises use that bad data in firewall and cdn rules which
> cause outages. For example, geolocation firms provide data that a customer
> IP is in xyz country but the firewall rules only allow abc country…
>
> Anyhow, as a person who publishes geofeed data representing 100s of
> millions of users, please …everyone… publish and consume first party
> geofeed data and do not listen to FUD from people trying to sell you the
> same data that we publish for free.


A quick shout out to Massimo Candela, and the excellent
https://geolocatemuch.com/.
They walk the IRR databases, collect all of the GeoFeed: files, perform
validation on them, and then publish all validated feeds in a single file:
https://geolocatemuch.com/geofeeds/validated-all.csv
This is a ~26MB file, containing the ~575131 prefixes with geofeeds…

This page also has a nice "Test your geofeed" feature, which allows you to,
um, check your geofeed.
E.g: https://geolocatemuch.com/?resource=31.130.224.1
This is an address in the IETF Meeting network prefix - the next meeting,
IETF 125 is in Shenzhen, and so we've pre-published a Geofeed file for
this: https://noc.ietf.org/geo/google.csv

W


> They can be stale, wrong, or false, and maintaining them is a pain for ASN
>
> providers. Many large telecoms do not even have publicly accessible
> geofeed. For example, AS11260 (Eastlink.ca <http://eastlink.ca/>) does
> not have a publicly accessible geofeed to my knowledge, and I am not sure
> who to reach out to get one. Not all ASNs are going to publish geofeeds,
> and it is fine.
>
> Providing IP geolocation data has real value, and I do not believe it is
> the ASN or ISP's responsibility to have their data accurately reflected on
> third-party IP geolocation providers like us.
>
> The ideal operation that we have is this: we do IP geolocation based on
> building networks of servers running active measurements, working with
> ASNs, attending conferences and talking with as many ASNs and range
> operators as possible. Shake as many hands as possible. It sounds
> borderline impossible, but honestly, that is the only fair way to operate
> as an IP geolocation provider.
>
> If, in any case, an ASN does not want to help us, that is fine, but that
> does not excuse negligence on our part towards end users. Our
> responsibility is towards end users (the customers of ASNs; internet users)
> and ASNs can be just voluntary partners. The moment an ASN, ISP, or an end
> user has an issue, we have to jump into the conversation and fix the issue.
>
> That is why I am here. There is a mention of the word "geolocation" in the
> NANOG forum, and we have to come here and ask if everything is okay. Do you
> have any issues with us? Can you check your data with us? Can you help us
> fix the issue?
>
> This MO of IP geolocation as a service should be: aggressive outreach. But
> we also have to admit that we are not the only provider, and we are not
> even the largest provider out there. But we do not care, we have to be
> responsible to everyone. We have to back our data.
>
> — Abdullah | DevRel, IPinfo
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/reincoder/
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