Chose London, but IP location is in the US

October 29, 2014 6k views
Vars
By:
Vars

I have very limited knowledge in any of this but in simple words, it just so happens to be that when I’m connected to my VPN, it shows up on ipcim.com that I am in the US and not the UK as I specified when setting up my VPN connection. As a result I cannot log on to certain sites that are restricted to people in the US. The weird bit is that it used to work just fine yesterday. Should I be worried about any security issues or do I have to destroy the existing droplet and create a new one?

Thanks in advance!

4 comments
  • gparent October 29, 2014
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    When you create a droplet on the LON datacenter, the droplet is created in London. There’s no security issue.

  • Vars October 29, 2014
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    But why is my IP location in the US (somewhere in Kansas)? I cannot log on to sites because of that.

  • gparent October 29, 2014
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    GeoIP databases are usually very inaccurate. You can try contacting DO, but I’m not sure if there’s something they can do.

  • aleksrk November 19, 2014
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    I have the exact same problem, I’m using my droplet for fetching data from Europe sites which are not avaible in USA. So I effectively cannot use my droplet in London datacenter.

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4 Answers
asb MOD October 29, 2014

Hi,

I can assure you that the droplet is definitely located in London. Some GeoIP databases are slower to update than others. For instance, IPLocation.net provides results based on four seperate GeoIP databases. I just check the IP of a London based droplet, and two service correctly placed it in London while two placed it in the United States. Different sites employ different techniques to determine the location of an IP address. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done except waiting until they update.

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  • Vars October 29, 2014

    Does that imply that the sites that I’m trying to access will be unavailable for an undetermined period of time, meaning that it can also take days if not weeks or more?

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hunky October 29, 2014

One simple way to check is doing a trace route of the IP and see which route it takes.. Usually that gives you an idea where the location is :P

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ddd January 8, 2015

As stated above, the updates by GeoIP sites take awhile. Once their own cache of the data expires they have to do it again. Digital Ocean staff can tell you if that IP is definitely registered in a specific geolocation, but only the reporting facility can update its database, and do so correctly. That has nothing to do with DO. I’m seeing this in irc channels about misreporting and it being blamed on DO, which is not the case. Thus why I’m speaking up.

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sunainaraghu November 28, 2016

Can you check Ip locator location in online at Melissa Data

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