Enhancing IP Geolocation Accuracy for ISPs and ASNs

Accurate IP geolocation matters for the services your users depend on — content personalisation, fraud detection, compliance, and location-based features all rely on it. When geolocation data is wrong, it is your users who feel the impact, not just the services they access.

How BigDataCloud determines IP address locations

BigDataCloud uses patented technology (US Patent No. 11,792,110 B2) to determine the active usage locations of IP addresses worldwide. Rather than relying on WHOIS registration data or manually maintained databases, our system maps the actual routing infrastructure of the internet — identifying public routers, classifying their roles, and calculating the geographic service area each router covers based on verified ground truth data. Any IP address is then located by identifying the router responsible for delivering traffic to it.

This approach is automated and updated continuously, which means it reflects real-world network changes rather than static registration records.

How ISPs and ASNs can improve geolocation accuracy for their networks

While our system works without input from network operators, ISPs and ASNs can directly improve geolocation accuracy for their own address space by following these best practices:

• Avoid using private IP addresses on public-facing network router interfaces.
• Announce all public IP addresses for your network routers via BGP.
• Configure public network router interfaces to respond to standard ICMP echo requests in line with RFC 792.
• Keep RIR inetnum objects updated, particularly the geoloc: attribute. If that is not feasible, publish a geofeed in line with RFC 8805 or RFC 9632, or provide us with a link to your self-published geofeed data.

For a full walkthrough of the steps available to ISPs and ASNs, read our guide: IP geolocation best practices for ISPs and ASNs.