I am the DevRel for IPinfo. While we recognize that we should have been more accurate in this instance, it’s worth breaking down how our methodology works. We a

I am the DevRel for IPinfo. While we recognize that we should have been more accurate in this instance, it’s worth breaking down how our methodology works. We are also rolling out some geolocation tweaks that should neutralize the inaccuracies caused by adversarial correction submissions. First, we use active measurement for IP geolocation as our primary source. Our main data source is our ProbeNet infrastructure, which consists of 1,200 PoPs across 500 cities. Through ProbeNet, we run active measurements to every IP address and routable IPv6. Because we run both ping and traceroute, we typically have a very strong sense of where an IP address is located. However, ProbeNet is not our only data pipeline. We process several dozen additional data sources. For example, unrouted or unassigned IP addresses do not generate active measurements, so we must rely on other forms of data. In reality, we must “fallback” to alternative location evidence when active measurement is unavailable. Even though we manage, expand, and maintain a very large server network and a highly complex data pipeline, some IPs require us to rely on what the ASN operator reports. It’s fair to say that no ASN other than AS131279 (https://ipinfo.io/AS131279 https://ipinfo.io/AS131279 ) is located in North Korea. However, if someone asks for evidence showing that a particular IP address is not located in North Korea, that is extremely difficult to prove in isolation. We prefer not to rely on a null-island methodology and instead choose a location based on a hierarchy of hints. For unrouted or unassigned IP addresses, geolocation can point to random locations, and in such cases we often must rely on the ASN operator’s data. I’ve seen this happen, even among well-established ASN operators. Some assign random placeholder locations to unrouted and unassigned ranges particularly for IPv6 IP addresses. More context: https://community.ipinfo.io/t/the-north-korean-gamers-on-steam-map/6857 https://community.ipinfo.io/t/the-north-korean-gamers-on-ste... https://community.ipinfo.io/t/why-is-this-orange-com-ip-range-in-north-korea/6883 https://community.ipinfo.io/t/why-is-this-orange-com-ip-rang...