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arXiv · 2409.19109

Rooting Out Incorrect RIPE Atlas Probe Geolocations

Katherine Izhikevich·Ben Du·Manda Tran·Sumanth Rao·Alisha Ukani·Ray Bellis·Liz Izhikevich
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Abstract

Geolocation plays a critical role in understanding the Internet. In this work, we analyze and fix operator-misreported geolocation. Using DNS root servers to detect speed of Internet violations, we conservatively infer that at least 2% of vantage points in the largest community-vantage point collection, RIPE Atlas, were not located at their operator-reported geolocation between January 2019 and April 2026. To increase the accuracy of future studies that use operator-reported geolocation, we open source our simple methodology, implement a reporting campaign of violating probes within RIPE, work with operators to fix the misreported geolocations, and release a continually updated dataset of RIPE vantage points that likely misreport geolocation.

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Katherine Izhikevich, Ben Du, Manda Tran, Sumanth Rao, Alisha Ukani, Ray Bellis, Liz Izhikevich. 2024-09-27. Rooting Out Incorrect RIPE Atlas Probe Geolocations. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19109

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