In an effort to find and report probes with incorrect geolocation, I'm rather curious to find out what's special about a lake just west of Wichita (Kansas) that results in it having 11 probes in the middle of it? I suspect some sort of very coarse location quantisation, yet the probes there are not just distributed all over the US, but I also see a probe from Madrid and another from near Ljubljana. cheers, Ray
Am 07.07.2025 um 16:06:14 Uhr schrieb Ray Bellis:
In an effort to find and report probes with incorrect geolocation, I'm rather curious to find out what's special about a lake just west of Wichita (Kansas) that results in it having 11 probes in the middle of it?
Geolocation info from databases is often unprecise or entirely wrong. Certain ISPs also don't update them every time they assign IP addresses. I set the location of my softprobe manually, the geolocation info at that time was the place where my ISP sits. That now changed and I wonder what causes that. -- Gruß Marco Send unsolicited bulk mail to 1751897174muell@cartoonies.org
On Jul 7, 2025, at 11:11, Marco Moock <mm@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
Am 07.07.2025 um 16:06:14 Uhr schrieb Ray Bellis:
In an effort to find and report probes with incorrect geolocation, I'm rather curious to find out what's special about a lake just west of Wichita (Kansas) that results in it having 11 probes in the middle of it?
Geolocation info from databases is often unprecise or entirely wrong. Certain ISPs also don't update them every time they assign IP addresses.
Ray’s location is close-ish to the "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_center_of_the_United_States#Contiguous_United_States” which is probably the default spot for any IP address “thought” to be in the US.
On 2025/07/07 16:22, Edward Lewis wrote:
Ray’s location is close-ish to the "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Geographic_center_of_the_United_States#Contiguous_United_States” which is probably the default spot for any IP address “thought” to be in the US.
I had meant to include a screenshot. The location is approx 37.75N, 97.82W I've found a similar spot (albeit with only four mislocated probes) in NSW, AU at 33.49S, 143.20W. Ray
On 2025/07/07 16:27, Ray Bellis wrote:
I had meant to include a screenshot. The location is approx 37.75N, 97.82W
I received a reply off-list indicating that this is the MaxMind default location for the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaxMind#Kansas_glitch I've had a probe myself for so long that I didn't realise you could install one without manually supplying a more accurate location. Ray
Ray, Thanks, it's a nice service to the community to try to clean this up. I was about to reply that it looked like the default location, but you've been able to confirm that in the meantime. I noticed two papers recently that did this sort of cleaning. Pointing them out in case it's helpful: 1. https://hal.science/hal-04215113v2/file/geolocation-reproducibility-paper.pd... In Section 4.3, this paper identifies RIPE Atlas probes that (based on the claimed location) led to pings violating the speed of light, in order to prune the ones they use to be more trustworthy. They flagged 9 anchors and 96 normal probes. 2. This paper looked specifically at the question of RIPE Atlas geolocations: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19109 They shared results on violating probes here (the paper also has a link for the measurements), and it looks like it was updated as recently as last week https://github.com/kizhikevich/violating_ripe_probes I'll also forward your thread to some of the authors of both papers, in case they have more to add. Ethan On Mon, Jul 7, 2025 at 11:36 AM Ray Bellis <ray@isc.org> wrote:
On 2025/07/07 16: 27, Ray Bellis wrote: > I had meant to include a screenshot. The location is approx 37. 75N, 97. 82W I received a reply off-list indicating that this is the MaxMind default location for the US: https: //urldefense. proofpoint. com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en. wikipedia. org_wiki_MaxMind-23Kansas-5Fglitch&d=DwIGaQ&c=009klHSCxuh5AI1vNQzSO0KGjl4nbi2Q0M1QLJX9BeE&r=6ttVGscz_Aloa7TJZDIaFYXAH8LXd2R9zt0BYA0qof0&m=nqi5k-5PADBIDPHTSIkyCHBlY0DMGD_SPgVWh152Ok5g_kOroxOHawuGxogU3Uzs&s=Cf2WVpyBqtKYqiUHLkSDLBoDOONVkjaY64DoXoaHHos&e= ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart This Message Is From an External Sender This message came from outside your organization.
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On 2025/07/07 16:27, Ray Bellis wrote:
I had meant to include a screenshot. The location is approx 37.75N, 97.82W
I received a reply off-list indicating that this is the MaxMind default location for the US: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_MaxMind-23Kansas-5Fglitch&d=DwIGaQ&c=009klHSCxuh5AI1vNQzSO0KGjl4nbi2Q0M1QLJX9BeE&r=6ttVGscz_Aloa7TJZDIaFYXAH8LXd2R9zt0BYA0qof0&m=nqi5k-5PADBIDPHTSIkyCHBlY0DMGD_SPgVWh152Ok5g_kOroxOHawuGxogU3Uzs&s=Cf2WVpyBqtKYqiUHLkSDLBoDOONVkjaY64DoXoaHHos&e=
I've had a probe myself for so long that I didn't realise you could install one without manually supplying a more accurate location.
Ray
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On 2025/07/07 16:56, Ethan Katz-Bassett wrote:
Ray,
Thanks, it's a nice service to the community to try to clean this up.
I was about to reply that it looked like the default location, but you've been able to confirm that in the meantime.
I noticed two papers recently that did this sort of cleaning. Pointing them out in case it's helpful: 1. https://hal.science/hal-04215113v2/file/geolocation-reproducibility- paper.pdf <https://hal.science/hal-04215113v2/file/geolocation- reproducibility-paper.pdf> In Section 4.3, this paper identifies RIPE Atlas probes that (based on the claimed location) led to pings violating the speed of light, in order to prune the ones they use to be more trustworthy. They flagged 9 anchors and 96 normal probes.
I've been looking at both latency, and the hostname.bind responses that come from the DNS root servers. In many cases I'm seeing speed-of-light violations, and can then trace down the likely location using the well known hostname.bind responses (I run F-root). I've seen a few with just speed-of-light violations, but where the routing is not too odd, such as a probe in Tirana with an alleged 4.1ms DNS response latency all the way to Amsterdam. I've been detecting these using my DNS Root System Visualiser and then eyeballing for outliers within the catchment of each F-root node that have far lower latency than closer probes.
2. This paper looked specifically at the question of RIPE Atlas geolocations: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19109 <https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19109> They shared results on violating probes here (the paper also has a link for the measurements), and it looks like it was updated as recently as last week https://github.com/kizhikevich/violating_ripe_probes <https:// github.com/kizhikevich/violating_ripe_probes>
Oh, lovely! Looking at their latest file, I see two there so far that already got fixed in the last hour because I raised disputes on them :)
I'll also forward your thread to some of the authors of both papers, in case they have more to add.
thanks! Ray
Hello, FYI setting the probe’s geolocation by the host is strongly encouraged. If the host doesn’t set it then it is approximated using geolocation services (maxmind) and we add a tag to the probe to signal this. Of course this is not always correct 🙂 Sometimes the hosts forget to update the location when moving houses. It is likely that some hosts deliberately set wrong locations. Geolocation in this sense is a (mostly reliable) approximation. We have means of flagging a suspected bad geolocation for individual probes in the UI, plus we are happy to collaborate with others who have reasonable, automated mechanisms to come up with lists. Please contact us if you are interested. In either case such probes enter a geolocation dispute procedure described in the documentation. I hope this helps! Robert On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 at 17:06, Ray Bellis <ray@isc.org> wrote:
In an effort to find and report probes with incorrect geolocation, I'm rather curious to find out what's special about a lake just west of Wichita (Kansas) that results in it having 11 probes in the middle of it?
I suspect some sort of very coarse location quantisation, yet the probes there are not just distributed all over the US, but I also see a probe from Madrid and another from near Ljubljana.
cheers,
Ray
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On 2025/07/07 17:34, Robert Kisteleki wrote:
We have means of flagging a suspected bad geolocation for individual probes in the UI, plus we are happy to collaborate with others who have reasonable, automated mechanisms to come up with lists. Please contact us if you are interested.
Is there some kind of daily limit on this UI feature? The last couple I've tried to report generated a red failure popup with "Failed to report geo dispute" Ray
Hi Ray, Indeed we have a limit to avoid abuse, it is 25 open disputes total. As each dispute is resolved, more open slots are available. But we very much appreciate people making use of the dispute functionality for legitimate reasons, so the team will be discussing ways to alleviate this. And apart from that, I will look into the possibility of at least informing users with a more precise message when they have too many open disputes to be able to submit more. Thanks for your feedback. Stephen Atlas UI
On 7 Jul 2025, at 21:51, Ray Bellis <ray@isc.org> wrote:
On 2025/07/07 17:34, Robert Kisteleki wrote:
We have means of flagging a suspected bad geolocation for individual probes in the UI, plus we are happy to collaborate with others who have reasonable, automated mechanisms to come up with lists. Please contact us if you are interested.
Is there some kind of daily limit on this UI feature? The last couple I've tried to report generated a red failure popup with "Failed to report geo dispute"
Ray
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On 2025/07/08 09:25, Stephen Suess wrote:
Hi Ray,
Indeed we have a limit to avoid abuse, it is 25 open disputes total. As each dispute is resolved, more open slots are available. But we very much appreciate people making use of the dispute functionality for legitimate reasons, so the team will be discussing ways to alleviate this. And apart from that, I will look into the possibility of at least informing users with a more precise message when they have too many open disputes to be able to submit more.
A way to get a list of my pending disputes would be really handy! When I started this process yesterday I wasn't aware of the academic research in this area and the regularly published list from the folks at UCSD. I therefore didn't keep a list of the disputes I raised. I only have a list of the ones that were resolved, because RIPE does email me each time that happens. Quite a few of my submissions overlapped with UCSD's latest list, and several of them have been fixed as a result of my disputes. Three more came in overnight, so that's three more slots that I can use ;) cheers, Ray
On 2025/07/08 10:05, Ray Bellis wrote:
Quite a few of my submissions overlapped with UCSD's latest list, and several of them have been fixed as a result of my disputes. Three more came in overnight, so that's three more slots that I can use ;)
Also, how do I report (private?) nodes where the map with the dispute button doesn't even appear, such as #60978 which is in Singapore, and not Coimbatore, India? Ray
Hi,
A way to get a list of my pending disputes would be really handy!
Yes there is: https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/?tags=system-geoloc-disputed Cheers, Robert
On 2025/07/08 14:30, Robert Kisteleki wrote:
Hi,
A way to get a list of my pending disputes would be really handy!
Yes there is: https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/?tags=system-geoloc- disputed <https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/?tags=system-geoloc-disputed>
If I understand correctly that's -all- disputed probes (currently 35) and not just the 24 pending disputes that I've raised? BTW, at latest count I've had 14 disputes fixed! :D cheers, Ray
Hi,
Yes there is: https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/?tags=system-geoloc-
disputed < https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/?tags=system-geoloc-disputed>
If I understand correctly that's -all- disputed probes (currently 35) and not just the 24 pending disputes that I've raised?
Indeed, this is not filtered for who disputed. Cheers, Robert
BTW, at latest count I've had 14 disputes fixed! :D
cheers,
Ray
participants (6)
-
Edward Lewis -
Ethan Katz-Bassett -
Marco Moock -
Ray Bellis -
Robert Kisteleki -
Stephen Suess