Websites Think I'm Either In Greece Or France

[#1]

I joined Plusnet a week ago and I've just started noticing that websites are checking my IP address and don't think I am in the UK. www.google.com redirects to www.google.gr, iPlayer complains I can't play content because I am not in the UK and www.steampowered.com is giving me all the text in French because it thinks I am in France. The reality is I am in London. I have been with many ISPs and never had this problem before. The growing number of issues I am having with this company already is seriously making me regret signing up to a 18 month contract.

[#2]

I don't understand that as your present IP address is shown as being in the UK here http://www.iplocationtools.com

[#3]

Yes all the ip sites like that and whatismyipaddress.com say I am in the UK but www.google.com definitely redirects to www.google.gr and the iPlayer problem etc. My wife gets the same issue on iPlayer app on her Android phone when connecting via wifi.
For example, attached is a screenshot of what happens when I type www.google.com into Firefox (browser is irrelevant though as it happens in all of them)

[#4]

The problem is probably due to the sites not refreshing their geo-ip databases often enough and I think the last batch of IP addresses PN was assigned were either assigned to elsewhere in Europe or fall in the middle of an address range which does.
For example, if the address range 4.0.0.0-4.255.255.255 was previously listed as being French but RIPE (the IP registry) carved it up in to more manageable blocks, one of which was assigned to Plusnet recently, some sites may think that 4.235.x.x still is assigned to France.
I believe the BBC has a feedback link you can use if your IP is being misidentified as non-UK.

[#5]

Thanks for that. So I can expect it to go back to normal in time? Would it be worth requesting a static IP to stop this happening again the future?

[#6]

You could try loggging into your router, then disconnecting from and reconnecting to the Internet. That should allocate a different dynamic IP which could be from a different range and not suffer this problem.

[#7]

There's a lot of GeoIP databases out there and most websites don't disclose which one they use, as far as I know anyone can setup a GeoIP database themselves and there's no requirement to actually ensure it's accurate.

The various DB owners also vary on how often they release updates and how helpful they are when you try to contact them about updating their DB, it's one massive minefield.
That said the Major players tend to be pretty good at keeping their Databases up to date as they tend to sell their geolocation services to website owners/content providers so it's in their interests to make sure the DB is correct to keep their customers happy.

It might be better if Plusnet themselves contact the major ones if they haven't already and let them know about their new netblocks as they're likely to take more notice if it's the ISP reporting blocks of thousands of addresses rather than an individual reporting a single address.

[#8]

Hi,
If the problem is still happening could you also go to http://www.whatismyip.com and note down what the IP address is at the time you're seeing the problem.

[#9]

Dave
He is still on the same ip address - I will post the details in the reported post