Why is my ISP changing physical locations?
September 18, 2013 5:26 AM Subscribe
While signing on with my VPN software recently I noticed that my ISP's physical location has changed. I live in Cleveland and when ever I would use my VPN software, as I do a few times a week, there is a map that tells me where my ISP resides. Recently, after years the map now shows that my home ISP is now in Kansas, however searching for my ISP address on various websites, it says my ISP is in Pennsylvania as well. Confused. I am aware that my home ISP changes frequently but it has always been in Cleveland. I have rebooted my modem and router a few times and it still reads the location in Kansas. Any Ideas?
I wouldn't be, unless you require accurate geolocation services for one reason or another.
It's probably no huge deal, though I could see where it might be annoying to have a map website or weather app automatically assume that you're in one spot when you're somewhere else. If nothing's breaking....well...meh.
posted by jquinby at 6:06 AM on September 18, 2013
It's probably no huge deal, though I could see where it might be annoying to have a map website or weather app automatically assume that you're in one spot when you're somewhere else. If nothing's breaking....well...meh.
posted by jquinby at 6:06 AM on September 18, 2013
Should I be concerned?
Nope. It just means your ISP's physical infrastructure is set up such that the place they connect you to the rest of the internet is not the same place where you live.
Can't find it now but I remember seeing a geolocation map of internet usage that had a huge hotspot in Middle Of Nowhere, Texas, because that's where a particular satellite internet company located their network center.
posted by ook at 7:12 AM on September 18, 2013
Nope. It just means your ISP's physical infrastructure is set up such that the place they connect you to the rest of the internet is not the same place where you live.
Can't find it now but I remember seeing a geolocation map of internet usage that had a huge hotspot in Middle Of Nowhere, Texas, because that's where a particular satellite internet company located their network center.
posted by ook at 7:12 AM on September 18, 2013
I've been noticing the "It looks like I am in Kansas all the time" thing happening more and more with people who use mobile providers and I think something is getting a little weird with one of the geoip databases (they vary in accuracy). That is, your ISP may have gotten a chunk of IP addresses that don't geolocate properly or that are old/reassigned IPs that previously had their location down in Kansas. I don't totally understand the system but I see the same thing happening
I have a volunteer job where people's geographic location determines some of the content that our users see and over the past few months we've seen a lot of people in various places in the US who have IPs that say "Kansas" even when they are not. When I connect from my (Vermont) home with my iphone, it locates me in either Connecticut or New York.
posted by jessamyn at 7:16 AM on September 18, 2013
I have a volunteer job where people's geographic location determines some of the content that our users see and over the past few months we've seen a lot of people in various places in the US who have IPs that say "Kansas" even when they are not. When I connect from my (Vermont) home with my iphone, it locates me in either Connecticut or New York.
posted by jessamyn at 7:16 AM on September 18, 2013
When I am at work, I see geographic content for either Atlanta, or New Jersey, depending (apparently) on what IP address I've been assigned that day, even though my office is physically located in Maryland.
When I am at home, I tend to see geographic content that correctly determines that I am in Maryland, although, in a different part of the state about an hour and a half away. That's likely where my ISP has their closest network center.
I don't worry about it, because the only thing it seems to effect is advertising, which I don't click on anyway. If I'm using a location-sensitive service like Google Maps or Weather Underground, I type in my ZIP code or use my actual address as the starting point, which doesn't seem like much of an inconvenience to me.
Is there a reason you're concerned, or need more accurate geolocation? I'd be more concerned if "the Internet" determined a more accurate location for me, though I guess people's opinions on this vary.
posted by tckma at 7:49 AM on September 18, 2013
When I am at home, I tend to see geographic content that correctly determines that I am in Maryland, although, in a different part of the state about an hour and a half away. That's likely where my ISP has their closest network center.
I don't worry about it, because the only thing it seems to effect is advertising, which I don't click on anyway. If I'm using a location-sensitive service like Google Maps or Weather Underground, I type in my ZIP code or use my actual address as the starting point, which doesn't seem like much of an inconvenience to me.
Is there a reason you're concerned, or need more accurate geolocation? I'd be more concerned if "the Internet" determined a more accurate location for me, though I guess people's opinions on this vary.
posted by tckma at 7:49 AM on September 18, 2013
There need not be any relationship between where your house is, and where your ISP physically connects to the public internet.
For example, I worked at a large software company, and anytime I connected the outside internet my traffic came out through a connection in San Diego. So, even if I was sitting in an office in Waltham, Mass, I'd see ads for "Sexy San Diego Singles".
My guess is your ISP switch backbone providers (think of it like the ISP for your ISP) and that provider's public IP addresses are in a different city than the last.
Also, there is the possibility that geolocation database you are looking at just has bad out of date information. These aren't canonical records, 3rd parties just build these databases on their own.
posted by sideshow at 7:50 AM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
For example, I worked at a large software company, and anytime I connected the outside internet my traffic came out through a connection in San Diego. So, even if I was sitting in an office in Waltham, Mass, I'd see ads for "Sexy San Diego Singles".
My guess is your ISP switch backbone providers (think of it like the ISP for your ISP) and that provider's public IP addresses are in a different city than the last.
Also, there is the possibility that geolocation database you are looking at just has bad out of date information. These aren't canonical records, 3rd parties just build these databases on their own.
posted by sideshow at 7:50 AM on September 18, 2013 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: I think I figured it out to a degree why it has my location in kansas. The map says nowhere -united states. It has me in the geographic center of the U.S.
posted by citybuddha at 1:33 PM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by citybuddha at 1:33 PM on September 18, 2013 [1 favorite]
Picking a random ISP that fits (or at least did fit at one time) the geography you describe;
Exchange Net (en.com), a local Cleveland dial ISP, was acquired around 2000 by a conglomerate that eventually became CoreComm (corecomm.net). Along with en.com came certain IP address blocks that were marked with ARIN as delegated to en.com, meaning that many geolocation services would identify you as being in Cleveland if you were assigned one of those IP addresses. After a bankruptcy and some reorganization, it wound up being owned by ATX Communications, a Pennsylvania telecommunications company. Now during that time, I know that some efforts were made to get rid of the dialup operations and outsource it to wholesale providers (like Level3 and ICG, IIRC), but usually those networks assign IP's from well-known and identifiable IP's, geographically-speaking. But if that didn't happen, perhaps because ATX had a telephone switch and wanted to terminate calls, who knows... but along the way some of that space was marked as having been transferred to ATX in Penn. Then ATX went bankrupt and sold off to First Communications ... in Ohio.
Wot a mess.
Most of the geoip services are of questionable quality. There is no reliable way to know where an IP address "is." You can make assumptions such as that two adjacent IP addresses are in the same geographic area, but this isn't always the case. You can try to infer the location from an ARIN registration document, but that identifies the netblock owner - which could be in another state. You can try to identify possible locations from traceroute and DNS PTR information, which is generally accurate where a recognizable format such as CLLI has been used, but is still hard to do automatically. And you can try to tie IP addresses to information provided by users such as shipping addresses.
posted by jgreco at 10:10 PM on September 18, 2013
Exchange Net (en.com), a local Cleveland dial ISP, was acquired around 2000 by a conglomerate that eventually became CoreComm (corecomm.net). Along with en.com came certain IP address blocks that were marked with ARIN as delegated to en.com, meaning that many geolocation services would identify you as being in Cleveland if you were assigned one of those IP addresses. After a bankruptcy and some reorganization, it wound up being owned by ATX Communications, a Pennsylvania telecommunications company. Now during that time, I know that some efforts were made to get rid of the dialup operations and outsource it to wholesale providers (like Level3 and ICG, IIRC), but usually those networks assign IP's from well-known and identifiable IP's, geographically-speaking. But if that didn't happen, perhaps because ATX had a telephone switch and wanted to terminate calls, who knows... but along the way some of that space was marked as having been transferred to ATX in Penn. Then ATX went bankrupt and sold off to First Communications ... in Ohio.
Wot a mess.
Most of the geoip services are of questionable quality. There is no reliable way to know where an IP address "is." You can make assumptions such as that two adjacent IP addresses are in the same geographic area, but this isn't always the case. You can try to infer the location from an ARIN registration document, but that identifies the netblock owner - which could be in another state. You can try to identify possible locations from traceroute and DNS PTR information, which is generally accurate where a recognizable format such as CLLI has been used, but is still hard to do automatically. And you can try to tie IP addresses to information provided by users such as shipping addresses.
posted by jgreco at 10:10 PM on September 18, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
Or, since you're using a VPN, the egress point where your traffic actually his the Internet really is in Kansas.
posted by jquinby at 5:38 AM on September 18, 2013