[Community Question] Virtual Server IPs Reflect Assigned Country, Not Physical Location

General
1

u/869066 asked:

I don’t think that’s the case, virtual servers should show the location of the country you’ve selected since that’s where the IP is assigned, not the country the server is actually located.

2

Great question and welcome to our side of IP geolocation data! The thing we do differently at IPinfo is that we actually try to find where an IP address is located. This is a bit different from how everyone provides IP geolocation.

In the industry, ASN/ISPs publish self-reported locations of IP addresses through geofeeds, whois records, and corrections. Traditional IP geolocation would simply take their word for it, aggregate that data, package it neatly in a database, and sell it.

:link: Appropriate geofeed URLs

However, what is stopping someone from saying an IP address is located in Antarctica or any random country? That is where things get confusing! You can operate a range of IP addresses and put random locations there, telling IP geolocation companies that these IP addresses are located in all these random places.

:link: The lie in their WHOIS: IP geolocation reporting explored

So, if that is the case, where is the geolocation part of IP geolocation? This is where we do things differently. We operate a network of around 1,000 servers (and growing) in around 130 countries (and also growing). We ping, run traceroute, and run all kinds of network diagnostic measurements on virtually all the IP addresses in the world. From the data we collect, we can more reliably and precisely locate IP addresses and put the geolocation back in IP geolocation. That is how we do IP geolocation.

:link: How we make sure our IP data is accurate - IPinfo blog - IPinfo.io

Because of this process (which we call active measurements), we do not rely on what VPN companies tell us about where their servers are located. We have the data to show where their servers are. For example, there is a very popular VPN company (not Proton, though) that operates only three data centers but reports having around 200 servers located through “virtual locations,” essentially meaning they are lying to consumers and companies. This can impact bandwidth, latency issues, and content access when streaming services switch to us and can get geolocation data from us.