Public geoloction of static IP addresses

[tdalej]

This has nothing to do with OPNsense -- this is firmly with the provider - Spectrum in Texas.

Spectrum has recently added fiber to my area.
I have a /29 of static IP addresses (Spectrum calls this a "5 block").
At random intervals, geolocation for my static IPs update to various major metro areas in Texas.
When running my IP through various ip tools on the internet you can see the different tools will show different locations.
I assume that those various tools update their location information to some extent at least to routing to/from the IP address, perhaps?

Spectrum tech support has been way less than helpful so far -- most of the 1st level responses haven't even understood the issue.
Most of them don't understand what a PTR record is and will argue about their ability to alter them. :=(
At one point, on escalation I was told that Spectrum will route traffic outside the spectrum network in various physical locations, based on network load.
None of them will answer any questions about how spectrum routing and traffic paths work, or how this could affect the geo-location of the public, static IP addresses for which I pay extra.

Traffic that originates coming to me seems unaffected -- the IP addresses do appear to appear to be public.  Where this shows up as a a major PITA is that I frequently get security alerts from places like ebay - " A device logged into your account from San Marcos, Tx - was that you?" - next login I have to go through account verification. again.
Some streaming services provide "local" channels.
Makes life interesting if you never know if "local" will be Dallas/Ft Worth, Houston, Austin or San Antonio ... 

Any one else on Spectrum or encountered anything like this?

[pfry]

This has nothing to do with OPNsense -- this is firmly with the provider - Spectrum in Texas.

Spectrum has recently added fiber to my area.
I have a /29 of static IP addresses (Spectrum calls this a "5 block").
[...]
Most of them don't understand what a PTR record is and will argue about their ability to alter them. :=(
[...]

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but did you find a reasonable path to getting IN-ADDR set on your block? Time Warner had a dedicated e-mail address for that, but it's gone now. AT&T appears to have a dedicated e-mail address; Frontier has Frontier Hostmaster. All I could find for Charter/Spectrum was "call business support". (My former employers offered delegation, but few do that for less than a /24 these days.)

I doubt you'll ever get a straight answer about pathing, unless you get a particularly dedicated support tech, or a network tech decides to contact you. Wacky pathing can vary between bug and feature, and I wouldn't expect it to affect geolocation... but that's not my gig. Allocation could be an issue, e.g. if small allocations are drawn from a single large pool and scattered all over the network. It's a bit unlikely (it would take some really lousy planning), but you can't easily evaluate that from outside.

Aside: Instead of a logical /28, Frontier assigned me (effectively) a /29 and a couple /30s (i.e. basically a random set). Ouch.

[tdalej]

[quotr]
I don't mean to hijack your thread, but did you find a reasonable path to getting IN-ADDR set on your block? Time Warner had a dedicated e-mail address for that, but it's gone now. AT&T appears to have a dedicated e-mail address; Frontier has Frontier Hostmaster. All I could find for Charter/Spectrum was "call business support". (My former employers offered delegation, but few do that for less than a /24 these days.)

I doubt you'll ever get a straight answer about pathing, unless you get a particularly dedicated support tech, or a network tech decides to contact you. Wacky pathing can vary between bug and feature, and I wouldn't expect it to affect geolocation... but that's not my gig. Allocation could be an issue, e.g. if small allocations are drawn from a single large pool and scattered all over the network. It's a bit unlikely (it would take some really lousy planning), but you can't easily evaluate that from outside.

Aside: Instead of a logical /28, Frontier assigned me (effectively) a /29 and a couple /30s (i.e. basically a random set). Ouch.
[/quote]

For Spectrum business the only option is "call business support" and wade through 1st level to get someone who even knows how to do internal DNS requests.
I really haven't had much issue with them on that front -- all I'm looking for is to have proper forward/reverse lookups working.  When they update the PTR record on their end it usually propogates within 24 hours.

I finally ran into a second level resource names "Zak" - that's all I could get for contact info - that said he would "put in a ticket" to have this geolocation issue resolved and it would take "up to 30 days". 
He would not share any details on what exactly they were changing though.

This is all new fiber build out in the last year -- I was promised when we signed up that within 6 months we would have the same up/down speed "as soon as we upgrade a bit of equipment upstream in your area".
That hasn't happened either.

At least I have fiber instead of the DSL and Line of sight radio we had before :/

[pfry]

[...]
I finally ran into a second level resource names "Zak" - that's all I could get for contact info - that said he would "put in a ticket" to have this geolocation issue resolved and it would take "up to 30 days". 
He would not share any details on what exactly they were changing though.

Heh. I wonder if they A) have a single pool (or few) for fiber, or B) allocated from the wrong pool. I've seen both. Too often. It still ganks me, as it's a pain in the ass to fix, so it's often just dropped. (And I've been out of the business for eight years.)

This is all new fiber build out in the last year -- I was promised when we signed up that within 6 months we would have the same up/down speed "as soon as we upgrade a bit of equipment upstream in your area".
That hasn't happened either.

At least I have fiber instead of the DSL and Line of sight radio we had before :/

DSL Reports appears to be dead - too bad, as it was the best source for news on buildouts that I've seen. I'd've figured that the fiber build would have proper infrastructure baked in, but I suppose you never can tell. Spectrum advertises symmeteric bandwidth for Garland/Sachse/Wylie/etc. cable, but it could be BS... er, coming soon.

[tdalej]

Update on my months-long struggle with Spectrum:

First off, I have a business account.
Static IPV4 IP
Actually, a /29 subnet of IPV4 - 5 IPs and a gateway IP.

The issue I described manifested as certain streaming services displaying what is supposed to be "local" content for areas that varied wildly across the State of Texas.
We should get "local" content for the DFW area.
     Example - wife subscribes to Peacock to get the Dallas NBC news stations - we are far enough away that terrestrial antenna won't work - 
                      At random intervals, something from spectrum causes geo-location ip information across the internet to update and shift us from Dallas to Houston, or Austin, or San Antonio, or El Paso, or Colorado, or New Jersey ..   You never new if you would get local content or something from New York.

We started with each of the streaming services first -- at least for the ones you _can_ get help for, the rest I forced a cancellation.  (I have been very unpopular) for months.
Everyone of them just said you need to talk to your provider, so we moved on to Spectrum.
After weeks of arguing with first level techs (I had one young lady tell me - in effect - that "geo-location of IP addresses doesn't exist" and _clearly_ didn't understand basic network routing).

BTW, if you call Spectrum and mention to anyone anything about "streaming services" they immediately proceed to do all sorts of wonderful testing and validation of the Spectrum Streaming app.  No matter how hard you try to tell them it's an issue with streaming a different service over the internet -- it's like their employees live in a world where nothing other than Spectrum exists, and they don't really believe other services are possible.

 I finally got a case -- Which Spectrum will not share case numbers with you for reference on future calls -- you just have to hope the next tech that picks up can "find" your ticket --  escalated to ... someone.
I got a promise that a "ticket was in, but could take up to 30 days to process".

45 days of content hopscotch later still no fix.

I escalated the escalation, and even had ...someone... leave a voice mail about the issue.
Another week or so is the current guesstimate.


Spectrum has their own Streaming App that carries Spectrum produced "local news".
So long as that is "working", it's hard to get past 1st level support.


I have suspected they are doing carrier grade NAT and load balancing may be why the geo-location for us kept changing.
If anyone knows of a way to verify that without Spectrum's help I'd love to know it.
I have yet to speak to any first level tech that even knew what NAT might be, and anyone above that level has been very careful to just ignore any direct questions about it.

Short version, if you have any other option, take it!
I have been lucky -- I have had Verizon Fiber and later Frontier when they took over in the Dallas area.
It was pricey but under verizon it just worked 24x7.
Frontier took over and there were some hiccups, but it smoothed out OK.
Moved out here and wound up with spectrum.
It's like they have taken the Comcast playbook as their bible :/