0

I'm providing a service that is limited to Singapore only and I've region-blocked any other regions, including USA.

Today a customer from Singapore informed me that he cannot access to my server.

He was using Public IP of 168.149.0.0/16 and ARIN says it's owned by US organization, which is why it was region-blocked.

I'm confused because many whois sites tell me differenetly where this IP is from.

Q. Is it common that a public IP owned by US organization, sorted as US public IP, is actually being used in different part of the globe?

enter image description here

Improve this question
6
  • 2
    IP addresses are not geographic locations. They. Can. Be. Anywhere. If you follow the crumbs, it belongs to Broadcom. Where it is in the world is where ever broadcom puts it. It's actually being announced by Google! (private cloud)
    – Ricky
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 4:47
  • 5
    There's a big difference between the location details of the company the IP addreses were assigned to and the location where they are used.
    – Teun Vink
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 5:45
  • 2
    WHOIS reports WHO owns (controls/is assigned/...) the address space, not where it's being used. As I've said (many times), an IP address can be anywhere in the world, at any time, and can be somewhere else in seconds.
    – Ricky
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 6:01
  • 2
    And with BGP Anycast, an IP address may be used on multiple locations at the same time.
    – Teun Vink
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 6:44
  • 3
    The root problem is your region blocking which misinterpretes inherently unreliable data. Geolocation services have a reliability of perhaps 80-90% - the gap requires manual or semi-automatic white and black listing.
    – Zac67 ♦
    Commented Sep 15, 2021 at 7:51

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

As hinted in comment an IP address can actually be used anywhere in the world. It can even be used at several places at the same time (anycasting, a technique to reach the nearest server that can handle the request).

I don't know if this is the case for other RIRs, but in Europe the RIPE do ask its members to enter the country in which the IP is supposed to be used. But there's no check on the value that is entered, so we can put whatever we want in this field, and an organization may forget to update this field if they move a network to a different location.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.