You Can Find Me Here: A Study of the Early Adoption of Geofeeds

IP geolocation is a popular mechanism for determining the physical locations of Internet-connected devices. However, despite its widespread use, IP geolocation is known to be inaccurate, especially for devices in less industrialized nations. In 2020, geofeeds were standardized by the IETF, providing a mechanism for owners of IP addresses (i.e., autonomous systems) to self-report the physical locations of IP blocks under their control. Assuming IP address owners accurately report these locations, geofeeds conceptually have the potential to enable “groundtruth” location data. This short paper takes a first look at the roll-out of geofeeds. We examine the opt-in rates of geofeeds by autonomous systems, and surmise the use of geofeed data by two major IP geolocation providers. Over the course of our 14-month data collection efforts (August 2022–October 2023), the number of IP addresses covered by geofeeds has increased tenfold; however, the adoption rate is still low—less than 1% of the IPv4 address space is covered by geofeeds. We find that the rollout is also uneven, with more industrialized nations opting into geofeeds at rates higher than those of less industrialized ones. Moreover, our comparison of geofeed data to locations reported by commercial IP geolocation services suggests that these commercial services may be beginning to incorporate geofeed data into their resolutions. We discuss the implications of our findings, including the potential that uneven adoption rates may further disenfranchise Internet users in less industrialized nations.