3 ms·

You use MaxMind's IP database which tells you the origin type (residential, commercial, proxy, etc)

by aroch 11y ago

vonklaus 11y ago
ok this is what I was really wondering. So Netflix can tell that you are using a commercial connection to access the service? Can they also tell that you are forwarding in the case of a proxy or something? That is what I don't get, because if I spin up a digital ocean server in London and put openVPN on it, they can probably tell the IP block belongs to a cloud services company. However, they can't just be running ips against a list right? So what is the work around?
- aroch 11y ago
  Any given IP is "owned" by an Autonomous System[1], so if you see a user whose IP is from AS14061[2], you know they're coming from DigitalOcean and you can say, "No content for you". They are basically checking your IP against a big list and seeing where you're coming from. In some cases it is more ambiguous, say the IP belongs to Verizon but it happens to one of the blocks Verizon provisions in the EU or as part of their PPI infrastructure. You only know this because someone has annotated this metadata (eg MaxMind). Or if its a Comcast Business account IP, do you call that commercial and block it? It could be someone at home who forked out for the business class service. This is again where IP-surveillance companies come into play. In even more ambiguous cases, the IP belongs to AS####A (A hosting company) but is announced by AS####B (A residential ISP), such that traffic from to or from the IPs belonging to AS####A looks for all the world that it is really AS####B's traffic. Do you treat those users a residential because ISP-B is potentially renting that IP space or do you call it commercial? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%... [2] http://bgp.he.net/AS14061 http://bgp.he.net/AS14061

You use MaxMind's IP database which tells you the origin type (residential, commercial, proxy, etc)

by aroch 11y ago

You use MaxMind's IP database which tells you the origin type (residential, commercial, proxy, etc)

ok this is what I was really wondering. So Netflix can tell that you are using a commercial connection to access the service? Can they also tell that you are forwarding in the case of a proxy or something? That is what I don't get, because if I spin up a digital ocean server in London and put openVPN on it, they can probably tell the IP block belongs to a cloud services company. However, they can't just be running ips against a list right? So what is the work around?

aroch 11y ago
Any given IP is "owned" by an Autonomous System[1], so if you see a user whose IP is from AS14061[2], you know they're coming from DigitalOcean and you can say, "No content for you". They are basically checking your IP against a big list and seeing where you're coming from. In some cases it is more ambiguous, say the IP belongs to Verizon but it happens to one of the blocks Verizon provisions in the EU or as part of their PPI infrastructure. You only know this because someone has annotated this metadata (eg MaxMind). Or if its a Comcast Business account IP, do you call that commercial and block it? It could be someone at home who forked out for the business class service. This is again where IP-surveillance companies come into play. In even more ambiguous cases, the IP belongs to AS####A (A hosting company) but is announced by AS####B (A residential ISP), such that traffic from to or from the IPs belonging to AS####A looks for all the world that it is really AS####B's traffic. Do you treat those users a residential because ISP-B is potentially renting that IP space or do you call it commercial? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%... [2] http://bgp.he.net/AS14061 http://bgp.he.net/AS14061