Why is IP geolocation not exact? Why does an ip tracker or ip lookup website show a place a bit distant from my street?
In: Technology
Your public IP address which geolocation uses, belongs to your ISP. So it’s most likely tracing that IP address to a data center where your ISP’s router is located.
IP geolocation works the same way someone could guess your location from your phone number. Different area codes and prefices are assigned to different regions (or at least they use to before cell phones messed things up), and if you knew the pattern you could make a good estimate.
IP addresses work the same way, ISPs control certain ranges of IP addresses, and often break them up by region. The location you are seeing could be an arbitrary point in the middle of the region that has IP addresses like yours, or it could be one of the ISPs routing junctions. Or, as is often the case, it could be completely wrong.
* There is nothing inherent about your IP address that maps it to a specific address.
* You ISP assigns you an IP address.
* If it’s a small local ISP, then it’s reasonable for the IP tracker websites to know the general location of where you are.
* But for large nationwide ISPs they could use an IP anywhere in the country.
It has to do a lot with routing. Routing is how a packet/message finds its way to the destination machine. ISPs are lazy/efficient when setting up routing tables. Instead of making every house a separate routing entry, they make the entire area 1 entry. The geolocation sites have either done some work to map those areas or most likely they get the information from the ISPs. Since your public IP is dynamic and it would be a privacy concern if the ISPs gave out your address, they can only map it down to the area.
Simplified technical information:
132.74.85.15 is your IP. It is part of the routing entry 132.74.85.0/24 (132.74.85.0 – 132.74.85.255). The geolocation site doesn’t know which house 132.74.85.15 is, but it knows 132.74.85.0/24 is in area X so therefore you are in area X.
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