IP addresses not UK - Can customers please report any problems here

[#1]

 The shortage of IPV4 addresses is causing all sorts of problems, not only for plusnet. Three years ago I was having problems on a forum I run with hacking attempts from Russia and Ukraine so I blocked the whole of eastern Europe/Asia. Recently RIPE have been re-allocating partial blocks of IPs previously allocated to Russia to other countries, the UK included, the 146.90.x.x range being a case in point. I then found that some of my own members were being blocked and I have had to unblock a number of ranges, so don't blame plusnet for all the problems.

Another problem I have come across is with mobile users who use the puffin browser. Puffin relays through servers in the US and does not present the true IP of the user to websites, sending instead the IP of the US server, many of which I had originally blocked for suspicious activity.

[#2]

I am having upload issues recently, and it appears my IP has been set to static as I do not get assigned a new one when I reset or restart my router. The IP range I am assigned is in the 143.159.x.x range which is still registered (certainly with some sites) as BT Infonet, and although download speeds are unaffected, my upload speeds are between a barely manageable 1mb/s and down to 0.01mb/s, usually when I am trying to upload files to my dropbox account. As a result this takes many hours to upload files that should take seconds. I reported this fault to Plusnet through the support tab, and it is only since then that I noticed the IP change - is this IP change part of the line testing that Plusnet may be doing to determine if there is a fault somewhere? Usually on a speed test it's noted that I am on Plusnet, but now the speed test tells me the IP is a BT IP.

[#3]

Just come back to PN after a year at BT and I'm surprised to see this IP thing is still a problem.  The first IP I got when my connection went live was in the range 143.159.x.x which prevented my VoIP from working. I know this is really a fault of my SIP provider not having a up to date data base for IP geolocations but I tried getting them to fix this over a year ago and failed miserably.

So it looks like I need to get a static IP but before I order one, I'd like some assurance that the static IP will not be from the problem range.

Also at one time there was some issues with static IP's and the new / old network, can't remember the details but is that still a problem?

[#4]

I solved that by using static IP. I didn't have any guarantee that the IP will not be from the problematic range so I took the risk of 5 pounds, not so bad. Thankfully I was lucky enough and my IP starts with 88 if I remember correctly.

[#5]

I've now got a static IP, the VoIP is still working so all is good:)

[#6]

Couple of postss from another thread I started - Community Gaffer Chris asked me to post here:

<snip>

I recently upgraded to fibre from ADSL and everything is fine apart from one minor but irritating issue. Most websites resolve and behave appropriately, but a couple (next.co.uk and monsoon.co.uk) want to default to the US version. Next.co.uk gets stuck in a loop where it asks what country/currency I want to use, but selecting UK/£ just reverts to the same page with US/$ suggested. Monsoon.co.uk just shows all prices in $. Every other site I've tried which has UK and US variants (eg Amazon) behaves as I would expect. This happens with every device connected to my PN router, but interestingly, if we switch wifi off on our phones, the sites behave perfectly over 4G.

I tried to get help from PN via chat, but all they could suggest was turning the router off for a while to see if a new IP address would fix the issue - which it didn't. Any ideas?

<snip>

Ok, I've checked my IP address and it is in the INFONET range (146.198.0.0 - 146.198.255.255) mentioned in RichardB's link above, which some sites seem to recognise as US. It is also registered to INFONET Services corporation, rather than PN or even BT. I suspect this might be my issue?

<snip>

[#7]

Errr no - the issue is that the sites you mention are using out of date geo-location data.

If the IP addresses were universally incorrectly registered, then no web service having a multi-geography offer would offer you a UK variation.

Hopefully @bobpullen can spin some magic again with the geo-data bad guys?

[#8]

That's what I meant by that being my issue. But shouldn't those IP addresses be registered as PN or BT now, rather than still INFONET?

[#9]

I rather recall there's a problem with renaming. But that's not the problem - some geo-data providers have the locations wrong - indeed there is some suggestion that they've regressed corrrections made previously.

Edit: iPhone typos corrected!

[#10]

Call me cynical, but might not the fact that the IP address block is still showing as being registered to INFONET Corporation and the location as Philadelphia maybe not a wee part of the problem? I'm not sure where websites pull IP geodata from, but given that the block is still publically listed as being registered to a US company (albeit a subsidiary of a UK company), it is confusing at best. I suspect BT reallocating a US IP block registered to a company they bought was always going to cause problems.

[#11]

INFONET Corporation is a BT owned company:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/bt_infonet/

AFAIK these IP blocks were first registered in the US and later bought and properly registered by Plusnet / BT as residing in the UK.

When I first encounter this issue, over a year ago, all the geolocation databases that I checked at the time showed the IP as being in the UK.

eg: https://db-ip.com/146.198.0.0

and: https://www.iplocation.net/

If the internet worked as it should this wouldn't be a problem, unfortunately some websites, either by incompetence or by just being cheap, use old out of date databases for geolocation. 

[#12]

Just chucking my report of this into the mix. Currently have a 209.93 range address, no idea if thats affected or not. However in the last week (I was away for a month before that) I've been getting problems with various sites which are location related - that has included eBay (saying a postage price wasnt available for my location - yesterday evening) and YouTube (saying that a video wasnt released for my location - which could be some other problem entirely). My modem is rarely reset so I'm assuming my IP address is quite persistent

[#13]

I'd urge anyone experiencing these types of issue to attempt contacting the site owners themselves. Grab your IP from here and explain that when assigned this address, you're presented with the non-UK variant of the companies site.

In the (probably likely) event that you don't get anywhere, we should be able to step in and see if we have any more luck.

If anyone knows of any of the larger IP Location providers that are incorrectly classifying our ranges, then let me know and I'll ping them a message.

[#14]

"I'd urge anyone experiencing these types of issue to attempt contacting the site owners themselves. Grab your IP from here and explain that when assigned this address..."

Thanks Bob,
When I follow the link you give, then follow the link to "More Info about You" all the info given in the WHOIS-Lookup section references Infonet with US contact details. Should that be different ?

Cheers ...

[#15]

I would suspect that report from Arin.  I just did that check - I'm on a fixed IP 84.*.*.* and the report I got back was for the whole class A address group which states the range is owned by Arin.