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

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

> The idea is absolute accountability for the data we provide. What you are
> doing is generosity by maintaining a good geofeed. We deeply appreciate
> your generosity. Again, we like geofeed, but we are focused on building an
> independent system which involves allowing us to host a server in your ASN.


IP geolocation providers exist because parts of the industry made decisions
that the location of an IP was needed for their product/service, and even
though it should never have happened, the cat is out of the bag and that
had to be dealt with. Geolocation providers are simply just collecting
information about our networks, and monetizing that data.

ASN published geofeeds exist because it was costing too much time and
effort for ASNs to constantly correct the myriad of errors that the
geolocation DBs had, so we came up with a way for ourselves, the people who
KNOW where the IPs are, to publish that to the world. We didn't do it out
of generosity, we did it because it made business sense.

With all possible respect, there will NEVER be a time that a 3rd party
company has more accurate information about the location that IPs are used
than the network who has deployed those IPs.


> We envision that we are approaching a stage where we are nearly invisible
> to internet users and ISPs/ASNs, reminiscing about the days when IP
> geolocation used to be a headache.


IP geolocation will always be a headache, because IP geolocation itself is
a terrible technical solution to the problem it attempts to solve.



On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 3:02 PM Abdullah DevRel of IPinfo via NANOG <
nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

> The idea is absolute accountability for the data we provide. What you are
> doing is generosity by maintaining a good geofeed. We deeply appreciate
> your generosity. Again, we like geofeed, but we are focused on building an
> independent system which involves allowing us to host a server in your ASN.
>
> We are not the only participant in the industry, so you are borderline
> forced to maintain a geofeed to help out the industry. But our approach is
> largely focused on independence and accountability. We own the supply chain
> from end to end. We want to have a great partnership with everyone who is
> focused on one thing: to ensure that internet users are not frustrated.
>
> We envision that we are approaching a stage where we are nearly invisible
> to internet users and ISPs/ASNs, reminiscing about the days when IP
> geolocation used to be a headache.
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