How accurate is geolocation?

Country-level: typically 95%+ accurate. City-level: highly variable — accurate for residential broadband in major markets, often wildly wrong for corporate VPNs, mobile carrier NAT, satellite ISPs, and anonymizing services.

Autonomous System Number, a unique identifier for a network operator. AS15169 is Google. AS16509 is Amazon. Looking up an IP's ASN reveals who controls the range, regardless of geolocation.

A DNS lookup that maps an IP back to a hostname. Some IPs have meaningful names (mail.example.com); others have ISP-generated names; some have none. Mail servers especially benefit from valid rDNS.

Can I look up IPv6 addresses?

Yes. The tool handles both IPv4 and IPv6 formats. IPv6 geolocation data is generally less complete than IPv4 because the address space is much larger and less densely populated.

Is the lookup logged?

Lookups go through public APIs and standard DNS queries. The IP being looked up is sent to those services as part of the query; the IP doing the lookup may be logged by the upstream service.

Why does my own IP show a different location than I expect?

Most often: your ISP routes through a different city than your physical location, your mobile connection uses carrier NAT in a distant data center, or the geolocation database has stale data.

Can I trust IP geolocation for compliance decisions?

No. For legal compliance (geo-restrictions, tax jurisdiction, age gating), use authoritative sources or accept user-provided location with verification. IP geolocation is informational at best.

What happens with private IP addresses?

Private ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, fd00::/8) have no public geolocation. Lookups return that the IP is private without geographic data.

IP Address Lookup & Geolocation

About IP Address Lookup

An IP address lookup retrieves information about an IP — its geographic region, internet service provider (ISP), autonomous system number (ASN), and reverse DNS name. The data comes from public registries (the regional internet registries: ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, AFRINIC, LACNIC) and commercial geolocation databases that map IP ranges to approximate locations.

Geolocation accuracy varies. Country-level identification is highly reliable; city-level accuracy ranges from very accurate (residential broadband in dense areas) to wildly off (corporate VPN exit nodes, mobile carrier NAT, satellite ISPs). The lookup is informational, not authoritative — IP geolocation should never be the sole basis for legal compliance, fraud detection, or geographic enforcement.

This lookup uses publicly available APIs and standard DNS queries. Results are not guaranteed real-time accurate; commercial geolocation databases update at varying intervals from hours to weeks.

Why Look Up an IP Address

Common reasons: identifying the source of suspicious traffic, debugging network connectivity, checking which ISP serves a customer, confirming the geographic distribution of a CDN's edge nodes, or validating that a service's IP belongs to the expected network.

Reverse DNS lookup also helps with email deliverability — many anti-spam systems reject mail from IPs without proper rDNS. Confirming an IP has a valid reverse name is a routine check during mail server troubleshooting.

How to Look Up an IP

Enter an IP, get the metadata.

Enter the IP address: Type or paste an IPv4 or IPv6 address. The tool validates the format before querying.
Run the lookup: The tool queries geolocation APIs and DNS for the IP. Results include country, city (approximate), ISP, ASN, and reverse DNS name where available.
Review the data: Geolocation data is approximate, especially below country level. Cross-check with multiple sources for important decisions.
Use the information: Use lookup results for diagnostics, logging context, or general informational purposes — not as authoritative geolocation.

Common Use Cases

Investigating suspicious server traffic — Unusual IPs in access logs can be looked up to identify known networks, hosting providers, or geographic regions of interest.
Debugging email deliverability issues — Mail rejected by remote servers often points to reverse DNS or reputation problems with the sending IP. Lookup reveals the rDNS state.
Checking CDN edge locations — Confirming which CDN edge served a request requires looking up the apparent source IP to identify the provider's network.
Identifying ISP for a specific connection — Customer support workflows benefit from knowing which ISP an incoming connection comes from when troubleshooting issues.
Verifying VPN or proxy usage — Looking up an IP that belongs to a known VPN provider's range helps confirm whether a connection is using an anonymizer.

Technical Details

IP-to-network mapping comes from BGP routing data published by the regional internet registries. Each IP block has an assigned ASN — the autonomous system number identifying the operating network. ASN data is authoritative; the registry record indicates who actually controls the IP range.

Geolocation is heuristic. Commercial databases (MaxMind, IP2Location, IPinfo) infer location from a mix of registry data, traceroute hop analysis, BGP advertisements, and crowdsourced data from devices that report their GPS position alongside their IP. Country-level accuracy is high; city-level varies widely.

Reverse DNS lookup is a standard DNS query against the in-addr.arpa (IPv4) or ip6.arpa (IPv6) zones. Some IPs have meaningful rDNS (mail.example.com, edge-server-3.cdn.example); many residential IPs have ISP-generated names (98-52-cust-65.fios.example.net).

Best Practices

Trust country-level results, doubt city-level — Country accuracy is high; city accuracy is approximate at best, especially for VPN IPs, mobile networks, and corporate ranges.
Cross-check important findings — Different geolocation databases produce different answers for the same IP. For decisions that matter, query multiple sources.
Combine with reverse DNS — rDNS often reveals more about an IP's purpose than geolocation does. mail-out-1.gmail.com is more useful than country=US.
Use ASN for network identification — ASNs are stable identifiers for who operates an IP range. Geolocation can be wrong; ASN ownership is registry-authoritative.

Frequently Asked Questions

How accurate is geolocation?: Country-level: typically 95%+ accurate. City-level: highly variable — accurate for residential broadband in major markets, often wildly wrong for corporate VPNs, mobile carrier NAT, satellite ISPs, and anonymizing services.
What is an ASN?: Autonomous System Number, a unique identifier for a network operator. AS15169 is Google. AS16509 is Amazon. Looking up an IP's ASN reveals who controls the range, regardless of geolocation.
What's reverse DNS?: A DNS lookup that maps an IP back to a hostname. Some IPs have meaningful names (mail.example.com); others have ISP-generated names; some have none. Mail servers especially benefit from valid rDNS.
Can I look up IPv6 addresses?: Yes. The tool handles both IPv4 and IPv6 formats. IPv6 geolocation data is generally less complete than IPv4 because the address space is much larger and less densely populated.
Is the lookup logged?: Lookups go through public APIs and standard DNS queries. The IP being looked up is sent to those services as part of the query; the IP doing the lookup may be logged by the upstream service.
Why does my own IP show a different location than I expect?: Most often: your ISP routes through a different city than your physical location, your mobile connection uses carrier NAT in a distant data center, or the geolocation database has stale data.
Can I trust IP geolocation for compliance decisions?: No. For legal compliance (geo-restrictions, tax jurisdiction, age gating), use authoritative sources or accept user-provided location with verification. IP geolocation is informational at best.
What happens with private IP addresses?: Private ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, fd00::/8) have no public geolocation. Lookups return that the IP is private without geographic data.

IP Address Lookup & Geolocation

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About IP Address Lookup

Why Look Up an IP Address

How to Look Up an IP

Common Use Cases

Technical Details

Best Practices

Frequently Asked Questions

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