Geolocation tools - IPv6 style

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Mon Aug 16 12:52:59 UTC 2010


On Aug 16, 2010, at 4:41 AM, Jeroen Massar wrote:

> On 2010-08-16 13:01, Harry Strongburg wrote:
>> Hello NANOG, first time writing to here.
>> 
>> My inquiry for you is on the subject of IPv6 Geolocation tools; or 
>> better yet, the lack accuracy in them. My main problem comes from 
>> YouTube.com and other Google Geolocation required tools (Google Voice, 
>> being an example). I must set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true just to 
>> access a lot of videos on YouTube, and to access my Google voice and 
>> similar services. I am unsure what country it thinks I am from when I 
>> access via IPv6, but it sure thinks I am foreign to the US.
> 
> [Well..... you do have a .lu domain in your email address]
> 
> The moment you have the ability to go to amazon/ebay/$onlineshop and
> order all kinds of random junk and give your address to the retailers in
> question and this has been done enough all the geolocation database will
> be nicely filled after a while.
> 
> Thus don't forget to provide all your private details in as many places
> as possible, the more they know about you, the better they can serve you.
> 
Wow... That's pretty absurd. I order stuff from Amazon/etc. from IP addresses
all over the world to be shipped to my office or my home in California. Does
that mean that the Geolocation things are getting confused about all of these
IP addresses I use at random and moving them to California?

If that's the case, no wonder Geolocation by IP is such a quagmire of
inaccuracy.

> Just wait a few years and all will be fine, when IPv4 just started to be
> used there was none if this geolocation stuff either.
> 
And even in IPv4 it's still wrong as often as not.

> 
> Geolocation for restricting based on 'copyright regions' or similar
> things is the worst idea ever btw, especially as one can simply get a
> "VPS" with some VPN in the location that you need it and voila, you get
> around these silly restrictions, just like getting a .lu domain.
> Of course everybody knows&understands this except for layer 8 and up.
> 
For once, Jeroen, I happen to agree with you, although I think you'd be
surprised at the number of layer 4-7 people who actually don't get it.

Owen





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