United Kingdom IP geolocation
starting january 21, I am having problems accessing bbc iplayer. initially it seemed to be due to some geolocation databases reporting a swiss location for the ip but it is possible that there is another blocking mechanism. If anyone has more info, please share.
Thank you,
peter
Comments
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Hello Peter1,
As IP geolocation could indeed be the problem you can refer to this article for more info on that.
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Hi Peter
I am having the same problem both on iPad and PC. It seems to have occurred when they did an update on the London server. I checked my IP address and it is telling I'm in London. I hope they can sort it out soon as since I have this service it has been great up to now. Looking forward to hearing from f-secure.
Regards -
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Hi Ben,
I'm happy to hear that you recognize this as a known problem and that the team is working toward a solution. That gives me hope that I will be abe to stay with Fsecure and won't have to be looking for another fix like smart dns.
I was going to speculate that your IPs got blacklisted by bbc but then eurosport player started to give me trouble as well, so perhaps the blacklist happened at the geolocating services these sites use.
Anyway, I hope you'll keep us updated on the progress.
Thank you,
peter
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The correct location has now been added to the RIPE database for our UK virtual location. While we cannot affect how quickly BBC's geolocation service picks up the data from RIPE, we certainly hope it won't take more than a few days. Many of the geolocation services already recognize our UK addresses as being in the UK.
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Great application when it works - customer service worst I've come across. No communication, no apology, no update, no nothing. Freedome shame on you. If no word or updates (inc. replying to customer support query) then I will be cancelling subcription and I hope many others will do the same.
Disgraceful treatment of your customers.
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Hello,
We are very sorry to hear about these problems you've had recently with the geolocation services.
This geolocation problem with our UK virtual location started when we added capacity to there about a week and a half ago. At this time we got new IP addresses for our new servers there. These new IP addresses we received from our provider were apparently previously assigned to Swiss and/or Dutch companies, as they were registered in the geoIP databases to those countries.
At fiorst, we had some technical difficulties with setting the correct location in the RIPE databases - the databases which the geoIP providers use to get their geolocation data here in Europe. We were able to update the RIPE on Thursday-Friday night last week.
It seems that almost all the geoIP providers have updated their databases over the weekend as they now point our UK IP addresses correctly to the UK. We've been able to find that one service that still believes our addresses reside in Switzerland but it looks like they provide updates only monthly to their customers. Apparently BBC is using a service still points our IP address to Holland. We hope that they'll get the updated information soon. That should solve the access problems.
GeoIP services are a bit problematic, as we cannot directly affect to them except by making sure the data in the RIPE and other similar databases (RIPE is for Europe, there are similar databases for other parts of the world) is correct for our IP addresses. After that it is up to the geoIP providers to make sure the data they're selling to their customers is valid. While this almost always works nicely, unfortunately sometimes there are this kind of problems we're now experiencing.
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Thanks for yr further explanation. However, I'm still puzzled about the update frequency of one month you describe. When I do a search at iplocation.net it displays a IP of 159.8.170.5, which looks ok. However, all databases referred to indicate latest update 11/30/2014 and for the suspect one DB-IP (Swiss reference) 12/1/2014. By the looks of it, they have not updated their database for the last 12 month. Am I making the wrong conclusion and is this what causes BBC iplayer amongst others to reject me?
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Hi Tapio,
thanks for the update. I appreciate the fact that you took time to explain the situation.
For iplayer, as a temporary fix I signed up for a 2 week free trial for a smart dns service, and for eurosport player the Netherlands location works well, you get dutch and english channels. I hope the geoIP database update will resolve this as using freedome as a one stop solution for all my needs worked great so far.
peter
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Anyone having trouble accessing 4oD? I am geting Playback error. Press ok and reselect episode to resume play but I do not get ok button.
As this is the only app I cannot access with F-secure. I know the app is working okay because I have checked it with another VPN app. Just wondering if anyone had any solutions to my problem.
Any help or advice would be very much welcome.