Draw a map of where your Mac’s connections go and you’ll quickly see oddities: a video streaming from a data centre in another country while it loads instantly, or 1.1.1.1 pinned to one city while it answers in single-digit milliseconds from yours. The map isn’t broken. The idea that an IP address has a location is.
Where IP locations come from
There’s no official register of where IP addresses are. Geolocation databases are compiled from registry records (which country an address block was assigned to), information that networks publish about their own addresses (geofeeds), latency measurements and user-submitted corrections. They’re estimates, stored as one location per address range, and updated periodically.
Five reasons they’re wrong
1. Anycast: one address, many places
Big DNS resolvers and CDNs announce the same addresses from dozens or hundreds of sites. Each user reaches the nearest. A database can only record one location, so it picks something — often the company’s headquarters or the registration country. See what is anycast.
2. CDNs move addresses around
CDN edges serve whoever is nearby, and CDNs reassign address ranges between sites as capacity changes. A range that served Frankfurt last month may serve Warsaw today, and the database catches up later.
3. Cloud regions and registrations
Cloud providers register enormous ranges in their home country and then use them in regions all over the world. Unless they publish accurate geofeeds — and databases use them — the server is placed where the paperwork is.
4. Mobile carriers and CGNAT
Phones on mobile data share a few gateway addresses among huge numbers of users, often located far from them. Your phone in one city may appear to be several hundred kilometres away, where the carrier’s gateway sits. CGNAT adds to it at home, too.
5. VPNs and proxies
The location is the VPN server’s, which is the point. But some VPN providers advertise “virtual” locations: servers physically in one country registered with addresses that geolocate to another.
How to read a connection map
- Country is usually right; city often isn’t. Trust the country for ordinary hosting, treat the city as a rough guess.
- Latency beats geography. A server that answers in 5 ms is near you, whatever the map says. Light travels about 200 km per millisecond in fibre, so 5 ms round trip means within a few hundred kilometres.
- Look at the network, not the pin. The ASN — Cloudflare, Akamai, Amazon — often says more about a connection than its location.
- Distrust a single location for anycast addresses. Big resolvers and CDNs are everywhere at once; a pin shows where the network is registered, not where your packets went.
Try it yourself: look up your own public address with any IP location service, then compare the result with where you’re sitting.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my IP location wrong?
Geolocation databases estimate locations per address range. Mobile carriers, CGNAT, VPNs and outdated records often place you in another city, sometimes another country.
How accurate is IP geolocation?
Usually right about the country and often wrong about the city. It's an estimate from registry data, network-published geofeeds and measurements.
Why does 1.1.1.1 show as being in one place?
It's anycast: the same address is served from hundreds of data centres. A database can store only one location, so it records one, usually where the network is registered.
How can I tell how far away a server really is?
Measure latency with ping. Light covers about 200 km per millisecond in fibre, so a 5 ms round trip means the server is within a few hundred kilometres.