Wrong geolocation when querying RIR/ARIN

Question

Hello,

we have some virtual machines in different locations. for the location japan east we have the following ip:
20.89.152.44

the problem now is, that the IP is registered to be in Redmond, WA, USA in the RIR/ARIN data. The RIR/ARIN data:
FSAPPLE2247:~ keihta$ whois 20.89.152.44

% IANA WHOIS server

% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org

% This query returned 1 object

refer: whois.arin.net

inetnum: 20.0.0.0 - 20.255.255.255

organisation: Administered by ARIN

status: LEGACY

whois: whois.arin.net

changed: 1994-10

source: IANA

whois.arin.net

NetRange: 20.33.0.0 - 20.128.255.255
CIDR: 20.34.0.0/15, 20.36.0.0/14, 20.128.0.0/16, 20.40.0.0/13, 20.64.0.0/10, 20.48.0.0/12, 20.33.0.0/16
NetName: MSFT
NetHandle: NET-20-33-0-0-1
Parent: NET20 (NET-20-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Assignment

OriginAS:
Organization: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)
RegDate: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18

Ref: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/20.33.0.0

OrgName: Microsoft Corporation
OrgId: MSFT
Address: One Microsoft Way
City: Redmond
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98052
Country: US
RegDate: 1998-07-10
Updated: 2021-04-13

RIR whois registries (RIPE in Europe, ARIN in North America, APNIC in Asia-Pacific etc) are the standard places where the geolocation data should be stored, and for example Freedome (VPN-Client) checks this when recommending a location for the user.

However, the commercial geolocation service providers such as Maxmind show the IP to be in Japan. It is likely that Microsoft has asked them to set this network to be in Japan, but haven’t registered the network in the APNIC with the correct location. It is highly likely that there is a large number of other products and services which will consider this IP address to be in the USA.

Can you confirm that and how we can solve this problem?

Best regards,
Sebastian

Answer 1

Hello @Sebastian ,

I contacted the Azure Product group team regarding this issue and below is the update that I received from them:

Microsoft publicly publishes a geolocation data file every month, which is utilized by many geolocation providers, including Maxmind. (The range 20.89.0.0/17 is shown in this file as being in Japan – as you mentioned.) The RIR registration is secondary and not normally a factor in the IP geolocation as considered by products/services.

Kindly let us know if the above helps or you need further assistance on this issue.

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