like I remember that at the time I was working on that site, my home IP in North Carolina would show up as Georgia, because our regional ISP routed everything through Atlanta
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Often times it's not even so much as routed through as just like, Comcast adds a new whatever and has to move a bunch of IPs from Georgia to Philadelphia. And all the 3rd party companies doing the geoip update it when they get around to it. When I worked at Comcast I had a lab week project to...
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 4 0 • view
...try and improve that by feeding more accurate IP ranges to the geoip providers, but it never went anywhere.
aug 23, 2025, 7:11 pm • 3 0 • view
I used to work customer service for an ISP and I got so many calls from people in San Diego complaining that their home IP was showing up as LA and how it was preventing them from getting their local stations through the IPTV service they used
aug 23, 2025, 7:13 pm • 3 0 • view
I lived in western NC for a long time. Being in the mountains, all ISPs used a single chain of servers. I discovered it when diagnosing some cell connection issues. Traceroutes for both cell and cable internet showed they ran through the same servers in SC, then GA before branching out to the site.
aug 23, 2025, 9:43 pm • 3 0 • view
and it's not like this is a fixable problem, either. you can't easily fix IP allocation, because we ran out of ipv4 addresses over a decade ago. it's also a tiered routing system, where it's built around how things are routed, not how they are geographically located
aug 23, 2025, 7:05 pm • 432 36 • view
to make this Actually Work you'd need a massive redesign of how the internet works, and all I can say is Good Fucking Luck With That
aug 23, 2025, 7:06 pm • 500 31 • view
Honestly I think elites are over the internet as it currently exists anyway. They would much prefer a series of private walled gardens with a bare bones back end inaccessible to normal users. Basically like Facebooks “free internet” in the third world everywhere.
aug 23, 2025, 9:30 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s right. It’s time to switch to IPv6 for real!
aug 23, 2025, 7:08 pm • 3 0 • view
the internet is so big and complicated and running on so much different hardware and software that making any changes, even relatively minor ones, is very difficult and takes decades... and that's for uncontroversial changes everyone wants!
aug 23, 2025, 7:06 pm • 406 29 • view
I’m curious what the government would even do about something like the Gemini protocol or gopher? Could ISPs block a protocol from being utilized? Idk anything about computers so sorry if that’s a stupid question
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 1 0 • view
Protocols which are distinguishable by looking at the traffic can be blocked. That's why many protocols mimic HTTPS to be indistinguishable
aug 24, 2025, 3:49 am • 1 0 • view
you try to change the internet at a protocol level to make it easier to determine where people are so you can decide if they're allowed to see porn? yeah sure boss, should be done by 2070 unless someone trips over a cable
aug 23, 2025, 7:07 pm • 429 34 • view
Also most people involved in that actively hate that and don’t want it to happen so good fucking luck
aug 24, 2025, 3:44 am • 0 0 • view
the only way to do this that has any amount of accuracy would be to do it at the country level. and even then: 1. that can still be inaccurate, it's just less so 2. VPNs exist and people already know how to use them
aug 23, 2025, 7:08 pm • 367 18 • view
Fun fact: In the European Union IPs are not always accurate even on a country level! My ISP, Digi, is romanian, and routes some connections in Spain through there. It's not uncommon sites think I'm in Romania
aug 23, 2025, 7:24 pm • 14 2 • view
and those two places are really far away in europe standards
aug 24, 2025, 6:22 pm • 1 0 • view
It would have to be the ISP in the end ,wouldn't it ?
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 1 0 • view
people use VPNs for their work and people use VPNs because of services like netflix being restricted by borders.
aug 23, 2025, 7:09 pm • 355 15 • view
so even in a hypothetical world where we manage to get everyone to upgrade to ipv7 that provides latitude and longitude coordinates for every networked device on the internet... people would just use VPNs
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 286 15 • view
"The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
aug 23, 2025, 10:09 pm • 0 0 • view
Getting anyone to actually implement IPv6 is the proof that this is just not going to happen.
aug 24, 2025, 11:57 pm • 1 0 • view
and you can "ban VPNs" but then people just use VPNs to get around your blocks. You can't tell VPN traffic apart from regular-ass internet traffic most of the time.
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 324 24 • view
depends on the level of blocking, DPI on the provider side can easily tell if a user is using a basic VPN, and there's this arms race of DPI vs DPI-evading VPN/proxy protocols that try to mask as regular traffic (that still sometimes get banned by finding some pattern) pretty sure coming to EU soon
aug 23, 2025, 7:33 pm • 3 0 • view
in russia a lot of hetzner/digitalocean/aws ips are also range-banned for hosting vpns, and western countries can just put direct legal pressure on them if they will decide to do so
aug 23, 2025, 7:36 pm • 2 0 • view
Genuine question, if this is true how is YouTube TV able to serve me a "LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE ON A VPN" service block every time I try to use mine on any device?
aug 23, 2025, 7:28 pm • 2 0 • view
data center ip ranges are pretty well-known by all services that care good luck trying to watch japanese netflix with a vpn server that's not set up on a residential network (thank gods for tsukuba university)
aug 23, 2025, 7:39 pm • 5 0 • view
so that's the thing I'm not seeing people talk about. I mean, these kinds of blocks are terrible for a ton of reasons, free speech, censorship, puritanism, homophobia, etc... but not enough people are bringing up that THEY WON'T WORK
aug 23, 2025, 7:11 pm • 346 57 • view
it's so awesome how we're thirty years (at least) into the dominance of the net as a major piece of social infrastructure and it's STILL primarily governed by people who do not know how to touch a computer
aug 23, 2025, 7:14 pm • 24 6 • view
the internet doesn't work geographically along political boundaries. it works along routing tables and fiber optic cables. you can't just block a state from a site. it won't work. You'll block tons of people outside that state, and allow through tons of people in that state
aug 23, 2025, 7:13 pm • 329 40 • view
MaxMind GeoIP free edition claims something like 99.9% accurate for country, which… isn’t that great
aug 23, 2025, 7:27 pm • 0 0 • view
I hear they have the internet on computers now
aug 23, 2025, 7:11 pm • 2 0 • view
I'm in WV, but my IP is (without a VPN) is usually in Ohio, and sometimes in Tyler, TX.
aug 23, 2025, 7:18 pm • 0 0 • view
Still better than being geolocated underwater because your ISP routes everything through Atlantis. (I'll show myself out)
aug 25, 2025, 7:55 am • 0 0 • view