London IPs

That would be the responsibility of whoever maintains the GeoIP database you're using; they generally don't directly use IP allocation data, as it's very often wrong (in fact, that's why there's third-party databases in the first place). So, contact whoever produces your database and let them know.

When the pronoun is the subject of a clause, it should be in the subjective case ("whoever"), regardless of that clause's place in the sentence.

@Xan:

When the pronoun is the subject of a clause, it should be in the subjective case

That grammatical rule is only in effect on days of the week that have the letter "R" in their name.

James

@Xan:

When the pronoun is the subject of a clause, it should be in the subjective case ("whoever"), regardless of that clause's place in the sentence.

I have a head cold, so I deployed the snooty voice. It sounds particularly humorous right now, but I will revise accordingly. -rt

@zunzun:

@Xan:

When the pronoun is the subject of a clause, it should be in the subjective case

That grammatical rule is only in effect on days of the week that have the letter "R" in their name.

James

pfft. I refuse to be grammatically accurate on a weekend…

@hoopycat:

That would be the responsibility of whoever maintains the GeoIP database you're using; they generally don't directly use IP allocation data, as it's very often wrong (in fact, that's why there's third-party databases in the first place). So, contact whoever produces your database and let them know.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was actually referring to the RIPE info. How does one go about getting that updated? Changing the whois "country:" field from "US" to "GB" may also help. I gather that those 2 bits of information are what GeoIP databases generally use, and it is surely better to fix things at the source rather than patching individual databases/scripts.

From the IRC Logs .. > Caker; any advancement on the geolocation of the IP's in London.. still reports as US?

<@caker> WoodWork: maxmind said they updated their DB, queued for their next db release

Whens' the new db release?

<@caker> I think they said next week? tasaro handled it, I think
This week is "next week"… maybe at the end of the week though.

That's great.

Was there any mention of the RIPE info too?

Nope.

All I know is; they've contacted the appropriate people, and also contacted the BBC, awaiting response.

The BBC? Is that because they are currently blocking access to UK-only content?

To clarify, my main concern is email. I'm considering moving a mail server from another UK provider to a London Linode, but I'm concerned that there may be servers somewhere (eg. with filters based on old/inaccurate info) that would have problems with it due to the relative newness of the IP block. Does anyone else have experience of running a mail server on a new IP block, and did they experience any problems?

@blah:

The BBC? Is that because they are currently blocking access to UK-only content?

I'm not sure the BBC would unblock the addresses anyway. As I understand it, they're only meant to serve content to residential IP addresses; server farms etc are meant to be blocked (license fee issues).

If London linode IP addresses can access Beeb content then there might be a lot of proxy servers running there :-)

@blah:

I'm considering moving a mail server from another UK provider to a London Linode, but I'm concerned that there may be servers somewhere (eg. with filters based on old/inaccurate info) that would have problems with it due to the relative newness of the IP block.

IMHO, you're probably safer from an e-mail perspective with a new IP address block rather than an old IP block. Older addresses may have been used for many different purposes more recently and made it on to a few of the mail block lists while new addresses are not as likely to be on existing lists.

@blah:

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was actually referring to the RIPE info. How does one go about getting that updated? Changing the whois "country:" field from "US" to "GB" may also help.
WHOIS information on IPv4 allocations is not arbitrarily changeable to this level; RIPE verified who we were upon our request. Also, we're not going to lie in our WHOIS and claim to be a British company.

You don't go about getting it updated – we own the IP space. :)

@jed:

You don't go about getting it updated – we own the IP space. :)

RIPE might feel a bit differently about that, especially when it comes time to renew… ;)

The IP location isn't the location of the company is it?

According to Domain Tools, the IP location is the US, which obviously it isn't.

IP Location: United States Linode Llc

@AVonGauss:

IMHO, you're probably safer from an e-mail perspective with a new IP address block rather than an old IP block. Older addresses may have been used for many different purposes more recently and made it on to a few of the mail block lists while new addresses are not as likely to be on existing lists.

There is that, but there is another lurking danger: an outdated "bogon" list. You would hope that nobody is silly enough to use a static bogon list, but apparently my ISP, for one, is: their DNS servers are refusing connections from the Linode servers. Blocked DNS servers aren't a big problem (one can simply use other DNS servers), but if mail servers are using them too (and apparently some are), that's more troublesome.

Btw, if Linode has other (older) IP address space available to them, perhaps it would be a good idea to move the default DNS servers there to be safe?

@jed:

WHOIS information on IPv4 allocations is not arbitrarily changeable to this level; RIPE verified who we were upon our request. Also, we're not going to lie in our WHOIS and claim to be a British company.

But would it necessarily be a lie? :)

According to whois documentation found on the RIPE site, the "country" entry doesn't have a definitive meaning and could be the country "where the IP space is in use". I'm not certain that is where MaxMind et al is getting "US" from, but an OVH discussion that I found suggests that it may be.

There is also the RIPE "delegated" list (that currently shows "EU" for Linode's block) mentioned in the original post. That is used directly by at least 2 GeoIP scripts that I found.

Unfortunately, this makes the London datacentre unusable for me in hosting UK-focussed websites.

My understanding is that, everything else being equal, Google ranks UK-hosted sites higher in searches originating in the UK. With the London IP range appearing to be US-based, sites hosted there will be penalised.

I was really hoping to move some sites to Linode since the announcement of the UK datacentre, so hopefully this can be resolved..

I also understand that IP country should be country where servers are physically located. Yes, in theory others should not rely on IP country but often they do (and sometimes this driving me crazy because it is nearly impossible to persuade server on the other side that I am really me just "moved" by few thousands km).

I believe you can imagine what this may cause when connecting to we-provide-enhanced-user-experience-based-on-your-location-and-we-have-no-idea-why-your-connection-is-so-lazy.

afaik, google doesn't care about the IP address just the domain name (co.uk > com for uk searches).

@drake127:

I also understand that IP country should be country where servers are physically located.

Agreed. Linode's other datacentre IPs resolve to their physical location (ie. texas, atlanta, california, new york).

The IP address of my home connection resolves to the city I live in, not the headquarters of my ISP etc.

@btmorex:

afaik, google doesn't care about the IP address just the domain name (co.uk > com for uk searches).

Google themselves say it does: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/W … 84af&hl=en">http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=55e9428ede0a84af&hl=en

Again, there's nothing we can do about this. There is nothing to be resolved except getting the GeoIP databases to fix their mistake, and we don't have much control over that.

This is an extremely new allocation to us. The /8 itself, 109/8, is a quite new allocation to RIPE from IANA – new enough that we ran into a few poorly-managed networks early on that considered the IP addresses bogus because they were operating with months-old filtering. (This is an example of a very isolated incident -- one I've only seen a couple of instances of -- and just demonstrates what we orchestrate behind the scenes. Don't let this dissuade you from going to London, as you'll never notice.)

We've been in touch with MaxMind, and they have informed us that the change has been made and should be pushed out before the end of the year. If the geographic IP database that you use reports United States for an IP that starts with 109, be sure to inform them that they are incorrect and their detection mechanism is missing some helpful data.

You can see here that the IP addresses definitely report that they are announced from London (this isn't always correct either, but it is here):

18:29 jsmith@aenima% whois 109.74.192.4 | grep origin
origin:         AS15830
18:29 jsmith@aenima% whois AS15830
[SNIP]
aut-num:        AS15830
as-name:        TELECITY-LON
descr:          TELECITYGROUP UK
[SNIP]
role:           Telecity Admin-c
address:        Telecity Group PLC
address:        10th Floor
address:        6&7 Harbour Exchange Square
address:        London
address:        UK
address:        E14 9GE
[SNIP]

I'd like to see GeoIP databases that factor ASN data into their determination, honestly.

@turnip:

My understanding is that, everything else being equal, Google ranks UK-hosted sites higher in searches originating in the UK. With the London IP range appearing to be US-based, sites hosted there will be penalised.

My understanding is that Google only does this if a searcher specifically requests only local results in the U.K., and does not take the originating searcher's country into account as a generality. The URL you linked to alludes to that, as well.

Give it time, we'll get this shaken out…

@jed:

Again, there's nothing we can do about this.

Are RIPE refusing to make changes? If so, that is strange, as there are many IP blocks that have a "country" field not matching the organisation's location, but rather the server's location. 87.248.118.0 and 87.248.120.0 are examples of Yahoo doing it. It would seem a bit unfair if Linode aren't allowed the same.

OVH takes it even further, using "country" values that don't match the location of them or the servers. You will find all sorts of European countries in the 94.23/16 block. For example, 94.23.113.0 = Poland, 94.23.113.16 = Spain, 94.23.113.64 = Germany, etc… while OVH and the servers are in France.

@jed:

This is an extremely new allocation to us. The /8 itself, 109/8, is a quite new allocation to RIPE from IANA – new enough that we ran into a few poorly-managed networks early on that considered the IP addresses bogus because they were operating with months-old filtering.

Can you please expand on the sort of issues that you have run into? Does it go beyond DNS servers refusing connections?

Thanks.

@blah:

Can you please expand on the sort of issues that you have run into? Does it go beyond DNS servers refusing connections?
We've seen a couple of very small networks consider 109/8 to be a bogon, and summarily drop the traffic. Not for long, however – we take care of it as soon as we notice.

@jed:

We've seen a couple of very small networks consider 109/8 to be a bogon, and summarily drop the traffic. Not for long, however – we take care of it as soon as we notice.

My linode is in this network and is listed at www.apews.org and www.cymru.com.

www.apews.org:

Entry matching your Query: E-180006

109.0.0.0/8CASE: C-131

Unallocated, dynamic or generically named IP spaceSpecial Reason:

No traffic until allocated

Anything we can do?

APEWS does not accept removal requests, per their FAQ, and consider such trivialities annoying. I would advise your recipient to stop using APEWS… any dnsbl with out-of-date information with a stated policy of not accepting corrections ought to be avoided.

Per http://www.revip.info/, it looks like that's about it; Team Cymru does not list the 109/8 space, although some two-bit dnsbl at http://www.moensted.dk/spam/no-more-funn/ appears to, with a link to Cymru:

IP not supposed to be routed. See http://www.cymru.com/Documents/bogon-list.html Bogon List v2.0 08 APR 2003 Rob Thomas bogon list 2.0 1055973600 (Thu Jun 19 00:00:00 2003)
This IP is not supposed to be not supposed to be routed, and is probaly not your public ip. It can't be removed!

2003 was a long time ago. I'd say that one's been abandoned.

I suppose you can add a second Linode in Newark just to relay mail to these borken destinations, then invoice the recipient's mail administrator (via postal mail) $20 to cover it. That might get the message across ;-)

@jed:

We've seen a couple of very small networks consider 109/8 to be a bogon, and summarily drop the traffic. Not for long, however – we take care of it as soon as we notice.

Ouch :(

Have you had success in getting the network admins to update their bogon filtering, or is it a struggle?

@blah:

Have you had success in getting the network admins to update their bogon filtering, or is it a struggle?
The one or two networks I've seen approached have been extremely helpful. The Internet is actually run by skilled admins who just need a bump, for the most part.
@nfn:

Entry matching your Query: E-180006

109.0.0.0/8CASE: C-131

Unallocated, dynamic or generically named IP spaceSpecial Reason:

No traffic until allocated
I'll ask a couple resources I have about this, but as another poster suggested APEWS does not like being approached directly. Thanks for the heads-up.

@turnip:

Unfortunately, this makes the London datacentre unusable for me in hosting UK-focussed websites.

My understanding is that, everything else being equal, Google ranks UK-hosted sites higher in searches originating in the UK. With the London IP range appearing to be US-based, sites hosted there will be penalised.

I was really hoping to move some sites to Linode since the announcement of the UK datacentre, so hopefully this can be resolved..

I was about to move my UK based websites over to a Linode, but I have the same concerns. My current provider reports a geo location of GB, United Kingdom (from http://cqcounter.com/whois/) whereas the IP of london1.linode.com reports the US. I believe the great Google does take into account the location of the IP address for ranking in the different googles (.com and .co.uk)

Any idea if this is possible to fix?

Thanks

Why does everyone have such little faith in Google's ability to do decent geolocation?

@mnordhoff:

Why does everyone have such little faith in Google's ability to do decent geolocation?
And you can always set site's location via Google Webmaster Tools.

I'm sure Google doesn't base its locationing on IP. Many websites are multihomed around the world.

Hi,

I don't know if this is related, but "time spend downloading a page" from webmaster tools show me this:

~~http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/6142/chartgc.png" />

Moved to London in the first week of December.

Doesn't Google have any crawlers in Europe or "he" thinks I am in US?~~

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster … 2399&hl=en">http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399&hl=en

> You can only use this feature for sites with a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Sites with country-coded top-level domains (such as .ie) are already associated with a geographic region, in this case Ireland.

If no information is entered in Webmaster Tools, we'll continue to make geographic associations largely based on the top-level domain (e.g. .co.uk or .ca) and the IP address of the webserver from which the context was served.

If no information is entered in Webmaster Tools, we'll rely largely on the site's country domain (.ca, .de, etc.). If an international domain (.com, .org, .eu, etc) has been used, we'll rely on the IP address. If you change hosting provider for a country domain, there should be no impact. If you change the hosting provider of an international domain to a provider in another country, we recommend using Webmaster Tools to tell us which country your site should be associated with.

@mwalling:

http://www.google.com/support/webmaster … 2399&hl=en">http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399&hl=en

> … If an international domain (.com, .org, .eu, etc) has been used, we'll rely on the IP address.

Hi mwalling

My site is .com and was in NJ … now is in London.

I'm not talking about geographic location, since I target Portuguese language … for Portugal and Brazil speakers, so in this case it's not advisable to activate this functionality.

I'm talking about crawler stats for page downloading speed.

Since the UK ip's are listed as US, can this be related?

Thanks

… He's telling you that you should use the webmaster tools to tell Google where the site is.

@Guspaz:

… He's telling you that you should use the webmaster tools to tell Google where the site is.

Hi know that, but we aren't talking about the same thing.

I'm talking about Google Webmaster Tools -> Diagnostics -> Crawl stats -> Time spent downloading a page (in milliseconds)

I believe that Google has crawlers in Europe to crawl European sites.

If Google identifies my site location for is domain or IP and I have a neutral domain (.com), the only alternative is the site language and the IP location…

Because Linode London IP's match US location, could Google identify my site as if it was in a US location, and therefor crawled by US spiders instead of EU spiders?

There is no reason for my site jump from 150 ms to + 300 ms if it was crawled from a EU farm.

About geographic location, I can't set this option because I'm targeting a language and not a country:

> If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—we don't recommend that you use this tool to set France as a geographic target.````

PS: English is not my language
````

Actually, you're both wrong. I was talking about the OMGSEO crowd.

Thanks for taking the time out to help with this - I still believe that the IP impacts the results in the SERPS for the location specific Google instance, despite what Google indicates (setting the location in Webmaster Tools). As such, I've held off getting a London Linode as ranking in the SERPS for country-specific Google SE's is important to me.

It's unfortunate as I'm ecstatic about my NJ Linode and continue to recommend them to anyone who's looking for a VPS.

A recent MaxMind look up shows the IPs being in London. \o/

-Chris

Thanks Chris :)

@caker:

A recent MaxMind look up shows the IPs being in London. \o/

-Chris

Thanks that looks promising. Other IP lookup tools appear to still show the US as a location, do you think these will update over time?