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 2:24 PM, Ben Cartwright-Cox <nanog () lists nanog org>
wrote:

> Depends on what your (from the geoip providers point of view) customers
> goals are really.



Yup, completely agree.

GeoIP's original goals were to get users to the "closest" datacenter to
minimize latency (yes, yes, network topology is not the same as geographic
topology, but it's often good enough).

It has been expanded (co-opted?!) to also get people to a close pizza
parlor, and now also is being used (abused?) to implement content
restrictions.

These were not part of the original design, and so it's not surprising if
they don't work well for that...

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad idea
in the first place. This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and
later expressing regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and
that pair of pants. "   -- maf

W

A very much non zero amount of geofeeds from providers opportunistically
> putting their prefixes in countries they are not, mostly for VPN placement
> (it sure is a lot nicer to VPN in the USA that everybody thinks is in South
> Africa, than actually running a VPN in South Africa), but there is also a
> number of networks that are using geo feeds as a opportunistic way to get
> their prefix is into countries where copyright holders don't necessarily
> have a with sending notices to.
>
> If the goal of you using a geoip database is to sniff out customers who
> are accessing content the you are contractually obligated not to serve in
> their region, well, you would actually prefer your geoip provider do it's
> homework rather than taking geofeeds at face value.
>
> On 1/27/26 17:10, Mike via NANOG wrote:
>
> Are you saying you know more about my prefixes than me?
>
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