Geoip lookup

Fri May 24 07:28:04 UTC 2013

On 13-05-24 02:57, Owen DeLong wrote:

> That was exactly my point, Bill... If you have operations in RIPE and ARIN regions, it is entirely possible for you to obtain addresses from RIPE or ARIN and use them in both locations, or, obtain addresses from both RIPE and ARIN and use them in their respective regions, or mix and match in just about any imaginable way. Thus, IP addresses don't reside in regions, either. They are merely issued somewhat regionally.

Correct.
But the fact remains that a lot of services assume geolocation works and
do so in terms of restricting access to their content (oftent due to
legacy content rights that require geolocation).

One extreme example. A sports equipment retailer operates under a
different banner in the province of Québec than in the rest of Canada.
They geolocate the user's province and prevent québeckers from accessing
the "rest of canada" web site.

So residents of ontario who subscribe to an ISP based in Québec are
blocked from the web site because that web site thinks they are based in
Québec.

The problem is with many web designers and managers who do not
understand geolocation and the ISP business and how they are structured.

In the case of the sports equipment chain. there is no real need to
geoblock. (perhaps to prevent Québeckers from seeing the prices in the
rest of canada ?)

But in the case of entertainment, rights to programs are purchased with
strict geolocation requirements. One example are pay TV channels TMN
(Astral) and Movie Central (Shaw). The first has eastern canada, the
later has western Canada.

an IPTV BDU (regulated "cable" carrier (aka: cable competitor) must
therefore ensure that a customer to whom it delivers the IPTV feed for
"TMN" is located in the region for which TMN has rights. Same for all
channels.  And there is also pesky channel substitution requirements
rhat are based on your location. In Canada, we are not allowed to watch
a program on a US channel if a local TV channel carries the same program
at same time.

The better solution is to do like satellite BDUs do: billing address.
But some web based systems ignore the unreliable geolocation services
and use them to geolocate their customers.

It is probably the fault of geolocation services which misrepresent the
accuracy of their data.  But if you can't beat them, you might as well
join them, and that may mean separate IP blocks for different
provinces/states and separate registrations so geoocation companies can
at least get province/state right.

It will get much worse if governments start to tax purchases/services
based on gelocation.