IP Location issue

djb14336 wrote:

We are sort of running like a VPN… a 464 tunnel, actually.  Just like a VPN, it can drop you out in a completely different area than your physical location.

I am typically “homed” out of Charlotte, NC even though I live in Florence, SC.

As such, my Sling TV wants to give me local content for the Charlotte area.  Kinda annoying, but this solution is saving me a substantial amount against Spectrum's standard rates… and I was tired of haggling constantly with them for a little $10 discount here and there just to TRY to keep the cost somewhat reasonable.

Once in a blue moon I will get shot off somewhere in left field.  Sometimes a simple reboot resolves it.  Have had to do a full power down for a few minutes a couple times though.

While it isn't exactly ideal, it is one of those pros/cons things you sometimes have to deal with if you are trying to save money or otherwise just want to try an alternative option.  I miss the ability to open ports properly as well.  So far it hasn't been a critical issue, as I am not doing any multiplayer games that REQUIRE it--but if I do get around to that again, I will likely have to go back to Spectrum on their intro rate if TMO doesn't figure out a better way to do dual-stack IP's.

syaoran, are you saying this is T-Mobile’s design and is inherent to the service?

I'm apparently being located to a place 700 miles away.  It's sort of humorous to get ads for New Mexico businesses on the Roku, but this could be a more serious problem with some websites and services.

syaoran wrote:

Revivalofthesoul wrote:

I have to weigh my need to access sites which require me to be in my state in order to use the websites versus savings $10 a month. This is only my 2nd day of their service.

Good luck!  In West Virginia, I always get an IP for Pennsylvania.  It is drawback for any streaming services that offer locals but don't expect T-Mobile to change how their service works and where their backbones are for network connectivity just to provide local IP addresses.  

I previously posted this in the MLB.TV blog. Reading the MLB.TV terms and conditions, we cannot "spoof" our location to avoid blacked-out games. Violation is a $100 fine and loss of account. Here's what worries me...depending on the location t-Mobile's chooses for me (varies from Philly to Pittsburgh to Atlanta), I get a different game blacked out. I technically violate the MLB.TV rules simply by rebooting my Askey gateway and getting a different location.

Any thoughts??

Hey guys, there's an easy fix, but trying to get the answer is like pulling teeth. Unplug the TMO home internet gateway, then get a pin or paper clip and tap the reset spot on the back. Also turn the power switch off and on for good measure. When the 3 top lights are out and the front light is reddish orange, plug the power back in. When everything comes up green, the gateway should be reoriented back to your local area.

dlpatneau wrote:

I'm into my third month of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet.  My real world location is Lebanon, Missouri (Missouri Ozarks Salem Plateau).  My IP location switches from Chicago, IL, Denver, CO and Independence, MO.  It appears my IP address changes/renews every 12 hours.  This wrecks havoc on streaming services and secure login sites, like my bank, Walmart, Lowe's, etcetera.  Trusted device keeps changing with the IP address. Didn't bother me untill I attempted to access our Secretary of State's website in regards to the midterm elections.  I was denied access for being out of state.  Yeppers, not a happy camper anymore!

sigh, the problem is IPv4 location data and it's not a problem specific to T-Mobile.  It drives me crazy too and it happens with every major national ISP - Verizon, CenturyLink, ATT, etc…

The fact is IPv4 is a limited resource and not everyone can have a dedicated IP address assigned to them.  That means the ISP's have to pull from a pool and that pool has to remain dynamic because people are dynamic.  The real problem is with the website owners that attempt to rely on known flawed IP location database sources.  Contact the website and ask them to stop using IP addresses for location information.

linanbob2 wrote:

djb14336 wrote:

We are sort of running like a VPN… a 464 tunnel, actually.  Just like a VPN, it can drop you out in a completely different area than your physical location.

I am typically “homed” out of Charlotte, NC even though I live in Florence, SC.

As such, my Sling TV wants to give me local content for the Charlotte area.  Kinda annoying, but this solution is saving me a substantial amount against Spectrum's standard rates… and I was tired of haggling constantly with them for a little $10 discount here and there just to TRY to keep the cost somewhat reasonable.

Once in a blue moon I will get shot off somewhere in left field.  Sometimes a simple reboot resolves it.  Have had to do a full power down for a few minutes a couple times though.

While it isn't exactly ideal, it is one of those pros/cons things you sometimes have to deal with if you are trying to save money or otherwise just want to try an alternative option.  I miss the ability to open ports properly as well.  So far it hasn't been a critical issue, as I am not doing any multiplayer games that REQUIRE it--but if I do get around to that again, I will likely have to go back to Spectrum on their intro rate if TMO doesn't figure out a better way to do dual-stack IP's.

syaoran, are you saying this is T-Mobile’s design and is inherent to the service?

I'm apparently being located to a place 700 miles away.  It's sort of humorous to get ads for New Mexico businesses on the Roku, but this could be a more serious problem with some websites and services.

In its current implementation, yes.  In the future, the modem will need some sort of GPS receiver or something that can identify where the modem is located to tell the routing that it needs an IP address local to the physical location.  I can't see this happening anytime soon as it would be somewhat of a combination between a CellSpot V2 and a Modem/Gateway to achieve what it needs to do.  

Just ran into the same issue with YouTubeTV. I haven't verified this yet, but I'm running my T-mobile internet through Google wifi mesh router. Devices that are connected to Google mesh seem to pickup the correct location. My desktop connected directly to T-mobile router is 100's of miles off of the correct location. 

There is probably a manageably small group of services that provide IP-to-geographic-location information to a vast majority of websites.  

So, step one would be for T-Mobile to contact these web sites and give them the address ranges TMobile uses and a warning that any information about these IP addresses will be invalid.  That right there might be enough for my ROKU to stop showing me ads for Pittsburg, PA.

Sonce TMobile does know our locations (based upon what tower we are using),tep two would be for TMobile to give the IP-to-Location services an API they can call to get an up-to-the-minute accurate location.

Do you read these threads, TMobile?

OK, let’s roll… and, hey...Lets be careful out there.

I'm in Phx, AZ. I got the original 4G Tmo-HI in Oct 2020. It constantly showed my location, based on my public IP, as being in Los Angeles, CA, somewhere near LAX. That's 400 miles away.

I have a FireTV adapter that I use to access several services, and I get local ads for southern CA, and even political ads for CA. I don't get anything for AZ or the Phx area.

I switched to their 5G modem several months later, and they started building a new 5G tower about 1000 feet from my house. I noticed the public IP would switch between a Phoenix IP and one in the LA area. I talked to someone in their ABQ tech center and was told that once the 5G towers were fully operational, then I'd see Phx-based public IPs all the time.

What has happened is the opposite: all I get now is from a different location in downtown LA that usually shows up as Compton, Anaheim, or just LA.

I've spent several hours on the phone with their so-called "technical experts" in the Philippines, and they just keep saying it's either my equipment or because the system uses dynamic IPs. My equipment is located behind the device and all are assigned 192.168.12.xxx IPs, whether they're connected via WiFi or wired ethernet. My desktop computers are all connected via wired ethernet. And they do NOT have GPS chips in them, so there's no way for them to say what their location is.

Nor does my FireTV device have a GPS chip in it.

I can verify that the public IP address IS, in fact "dynamic" as it does change from time to time. But it's pretty much ALWAYS: 172.58.16.xxx, which is always in SoCal, 400 miles away.

I do not understand why these people refuse to acknowledge that they are doing something that makes the use of GEO-IP worthless.

The only reply I got from them was, "it seems your internet service quality is not impacted by this, so we don't consider it to be an issue." That's true, if you ignore the fact that every eCommerce site I get onto like Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowes, etc, thinks I'm located in a 900xx zip code in LA County.

I have tried turning the trash-can modem off and unplugging it and leaving it that way overnight, then restarting it a few times, but it made no difference. My public IP still says I'm in Los Angeles, CA.

I do not understand why this is of no concern to them. I don't buy their argument that it has anything to do with "dynamic IPs" or even that my public IP is assigned "randomly" and "for security purposes". 

I'm not interested in California politics or SoCal businesses or anything like that. I live in Arizona. Why can't they assign me a public IP *SOMEWHERE* in Arizona or in the general Phoenix area?

This is more than just a little bit irritating. Living in central Ohio and having Michigan show up as my home has turned out to be a problem in multiple ways. Sometimes, the location is even further away. So, it affects searches for weather, job offers (one of us is looking), simple things like Craigslist. Twitter gives me topics of interest for Dearborn.  It's an irritation several times a day. There's no way to just fix it? Lock it in? T-Mobile has to be linking to a local cell tower, shouldn't there be an easy upgrade to fix this?

Same deal for us in Colorado, except I don't think it's an IP number translation issue since my location will alternate between Aurora, CO (not bad, about 30 miles away) and Memphis, TN (not even the same time zone!)  If I go to a geolocation site like https://www.where-am-i.co/ it will switch back and forth constantly - mostly the Memphis address, but then every so often it will come up as Aurora. 

When it’s wrong it breaks lots of things - streaming content, google maps, local weather reports, my Windows 10 current time, the default timezone for calendaring, and on and on.

I spent a bunch of time with "my personal tech support" on T-Mobile - I spoke with 2 techs who were friendly enough, but of no help at all.  The second one decided it must be a problem with my computer instead of their gateway and transferred my call to Dell's tech support line even after I told him it's also a problem on my HP computer and phone!

It seemed like the problem wasn’t addressed in their troubleshooting script anywhere so they just punted - I didn’t bother to call back and go through that whole thing again.

We have the Nokia 5G21 Gateway, but I heard from a human T-Mobile employee at one of their retail stores that there is a “new” fancier 5G gateway available now - does anyone have this new hardware, but continue to have geolocation problems? 

I’m tempted to call and demand the newer gateway.