IP address presents wrong location

[Mike1951]

The only IP address my connection displays is that for Earthlink, apparently due to my router masking my actual IP address.

This is a good thing, but all locations, nearest businesses, etc are based on League City, when I'm not close to League City.

It's a relatively minor inconvenience, but I was wondering if there might be a simple fix.

[Dave2]

Not that I know of. Every so often Google thinks my computer in somewhere on the west coast (which is odd, since the OS gets it right).

[katmandu]

You can set your correct location in Google Maps, and I believe they will then set a cookie with that info.

[Mike1951]

You can set your correct location in Google Maps, and I believe they will then set a cookie with that info.

Thanks. Tried that. Will see what effect it has.

[cyphur]

The only IP address my connection displays is that for Earthlink, apparently due to my router masking my actual IP address.

This is a good thing, but all locations, nearest businesses, etc are based on League City, when I'm not close to League City.

It's a relatively minor inconvenience, but I was wondering if there might be a simple fix.

At a technical level if your ISP drops you off to the public internet on IP space that is "registered" as elsewhere on the geographical map than your locale, that can happen.

On Verizon FIOS I routinely show up as being somewhere in Pennsylvania. I've never had a problem with that *cough*.

[ChrisFromDallas]

This information is based solely on IP-WHOIS information. That information is published by the RIR based on information supplied by the ISP the IP resources are assigned to. The RIR for North America is ARIN. You can learn more about ARIN here: https://www.arin.net/about_us/overview.html

The confusing thing with some websites is they try to present that data in a geolocation context. The problem with that is there could be all sorts of reasons that an IP address does or does not physically "map" to a particular location. Do not be fooled by what you see on TV. Nobody "traces" your IP address down to your house. That's not real.

Your IP address may have some other address / location assigned to it because that is where the provider's base of operations is, or they are routing the traffic from that location, or they just have an office there. Could be anything. On the flip-side, when we assign IP addresses to our customers (all of our customers have dedicated IPs), we list the customers' address that they have on account with us. That can get a bit confusing when you consider we have customers on 5 continents and I don't know how many countries / states / provinces / etc. For instance, if you perform a WHOIS lookup on an IP address that is assigned to one of our customers in Australia, that IP address would show up on one of those little maps like it's in Australia even though it's served right here in our Dallas, TX datacenter.

Bottom line: don't read too much into it. Other than a "huh, that's kind of interesting" thing, it's not going to impact much at all.

HTH