Developer console
// IP location, explained

Why is my IP location wrong, and how do I fix it?

An IP address carries no location. Every geolocation provider, Fastah included, infers one from what networks publish and register, so the answer can be wrong or out of date. Here is why that happens, and who can fix it.

Why IP locations go wrong

  • The addresses moved, the data didn’t. Networks reassign address blocks between cities and countries. Until a provider notices, it keeps showing the old place.
  • Registry records describe the organization, not you. The country in a regional internet registry record often names where the company that holds the block is registered, which may be nowhere near its users.
  • Mobile and satellite networks route through distant gateways. Your traffic leaves the network at a gateway that can be in another city, or for satellite internet another country, so you appear there.
  • VPNs, proxies, privacy relays and corporate networks. Websites see the exit point, not you.
  • One address, many places. Anycast addresses used by clouds and CDNs are served from many locations at once.
  • Location is an area, not a point. A result shown as a city may only mean “somewhere in this region”. IP-derived locations are approximate and are not proof of identity or of an exact physical location.

If you’re an internet user

  1. See what Fastah reports for your address in the IP explorer.
  2. Turn off any VPN, proxy or privacy relay and check again.
  3. If it is still wrong, the lasting fix belongs to your internet provider: ask them to publish or correct their geofeed. One geofeed reaches every provider that reads them. You can point them to our guide for network operators.
  4. To correct Fastah’s data for one address or prefix, send a data correction.

If you run the network

Publish an RFC 8805 geofeed, a CSV of your prefixes and their locations, and link it from your registry records as RFC 9632 describes, so every provider can find it through WHOIS and RDAP. Fastah picks up a new geofeed in 1 day, according to GeolocateMuch’s independent measurements. The geofeeds guide walks through writing, publishing and linking the file; the open-source tuning-geofeeds Skill checks it with your AI coding assistant; and the geofeed partner form tells us about your feeds.

Watch: geofeed best practices

Sid Mathur of Fastah at NANOG 96 on authoring and publishing high-quality geofeeds, common place-name mistakes, and using AI coding assistants and MCP to check them.

Plays from YouTube (youtube-nocookie.com). Nothing loads from YouTube until you click play; see our privacy policy.

Talks and paper

How we measure

Where Fastah’s data comes from, how often it changes and what we don’t claim yet: see our accuracy and freshness methodology.