My IP is wrong in Geotool

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sheppy
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Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:56 pm

My IP is wrong in Geotool

Post by sheppy » Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:16 pm

Hi,

since recently, geoip.flagfox.net only shows one of two proxy addresses when I open it on my mobile.
Earlier this had been a nice way to verify my VPN was connected properly.

Your test page geolocate.servehttp.com displays my proper address as REMOTE_ADDR.
Other pages like mybrowserinfo.com just show my proper address, so I assume everyone who wants to know my location will use that as well.

Apparently my address is 80..., connecting through transparent proxy 12...
Geotool is using the latter.

What has changed? Something at my provider's or Geotool? Is this a bug or a feature?
In my book using the proxy address as my address is not very useful, since that doesn't hide anything, see above.

Cheers,
Rainer

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rleeden
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Re: My IP is wrong in Geotool

Post by rleeden » Wed Apr 03, 2013 4:01 pm

Nothing has changed in Geotool in regards to determing your IP address.

I first check if the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header field exists and if it does I take the first IP address in this field as the client's IP address.
If that's not set I check for HTTP_CLIENT_IP.
And finally if that's not set I then resort to REMOTE_ADDR.

I'm no expert on this, but I understand this to be the accepted manor of determining a remote user's IP address, and from personal experience this seems to work OK. For example I am currently in work in London and my internet connection goes through an external proxy server hosted by Scansafe. The REMOTE_ADDR field contains the Scansafe IP address which according to Geotool is located in Birmingham. Whereas the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR field contains the IP address of the company I work for and is correctly identified by Geotool as being based in London.

On the geolocate.servehttp.com does it show HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR or HTTP_CLIENT_IP being set for you?

sheppy
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:56 pm

Re: My IP is wrong in Geotool

Post by sheppy » Thu Apr 04, 2013 12:17 am

Ha, you found it, for HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR it has the proxy address, same as CLIENT LOCATION.
HTTP_CLIENT_IP is empty.

The listing on domaintools.com is even more confusing: As IP address it has my own external address, for proxy it lists three addresses: one proxy in South Korea (or upon reconnect the other one in the US), one in the US (suspiciously close to domaintools.com) and my own external address.

Wouldn't it suggest itself to just use REMOTE_ADDR, no matter what?

I don't know whether it matters, but this is device and browser independent and only happens with my mobile provider.

(2 screenshots attached)
Attachments
domaintools.png
domaintools.com screenshot
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geolocate.png
geolocate.servehttp.com screenshot
geolocate.png (21.65 KiB) Viewed 11175 times

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rleeden
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Re: My IP is wrong in Geotool

Post by rleeden » Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:14 pm

sheppy wrote: Wouldn't it suggest itself to just use REMOTE_ADDR, no matter what?
No, as it works differently for me. For me REMOTE_ADDR contains the proxy address, and HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR contains my external address. From what I understand this is expected behaviour and it is certainly what I have generally seen when my internet connection goes via a proxy.

I don't really understand what your provider is doing, but I'm no expert. At the moment I'm not sure if I can change my logic in any way to reliably determine which is the correct IP address unfortunately.

sheppy
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2013 2:56 pm

Re: My IP is wrong in Geotool

Post by sheppy » Fri Apr 05, 2013 2:28 am

So I confused the fields' meanings, as I'm even less of an expert ...

My mobile provider certainly complicates things. But still, how do the others do it?

E.g. http://www.xhaus.com/headers gets my public address right; when connected via cable modem they even know the laptop's local port: another mystery, since I'm behind a NAT router then.

Richard, sorry to bother you with this, I just meant to 'report the issue', and thank you for the great Geotool page! Also thanks to everyone involved for the wonderful Flagfox extension.

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