Forum Discussion

Bogart9000's avatar
Bogart9000
Tuning in
6 months ago

IP Changed Randomly - IP Location now 240 miles away?

Hello

There was a broadband outage here yesterday morning - When the connection came back, it appears my IP address was changed.  This was a Virgin Media outage, their status page reported it too.

Anyway, its been years since my IP has changed and not sure why it was changed - I didn't even know it had happened until one of my apps reported it.  I checked the location and rather than report my correct city as before, it's now showing as "Utley" which is 230+ miles away.

Is this a known issue, for locations to have changed?  It's always reported accurately before.  I didn't even know there was a Utley location.

Thanks.

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta
    6 months ago

    Suggests internet traffic has been rerouted to get customers back online when a more local connection from VM to the Public Internet was down and requiring further maintenance.

    It is still England so will not affect access to BBC iPlayer / Netflix and the like where country matters.

    • cje85's avatar
      cje85
      Trouble shooter
      6 months ago
      Client62 wrote:

      Suggests internet traffic has been rerouted to get customers back online when a more local connection from VM to the Public Internet was down and requiring further maintenance.

      It is still England so will not affect access to BBC iPlayer / Netflix and the like where country matters.

      The traffic isn't necessarily being routed through the new location. When you get a new IP address for whatever reason often it will show the location of the last customer who had that IP which may be hundreds of miles away.  However the traffic isn't actually going anywhere near that location and it will update within a month or two.

  • unisoft's avatar
    unisoft
    Knows their stuff
    6 months ago
    Bogart9000 wrote:

    Hello

    There was a broadband outage here yesterday morning - When the connection came back, it appears my IP address was changed.  This was a Virgin Media outage, their status page reported it too.

    Anyway, its been years since my IP has changed and not sure why it was changed - I didn't even know it had happened until one of my apps reported it.  I checked the location and rather than report my correct city as before, it's now showing as "Utley" which is 230+ miles away.

    Is this a known issue, for locations to have changed?  It's always reported accurately before.  I didn't even know there was a Utley location.

    Thanks.

    This happened to me a few years ago. The building that housed the CMTS was too small and it needed upgrading. The only way to do it was lift and shift overnight, instead of new kit next to old kit in same building. So, VM did this but then decided not to use the building and re-routed fibre to another CMTS in next town. I got a new IP address and the CMTS MAC address changed when viewing the Hub's status log.

    It took around 2 months for IP's to be recognised from my town rather than the other town as they obviously did this work later. In the meantime, things like weather was showing the other town's weather forecast if it was using location by IP.

  • jpeg1's avatar
    jpeg1
    Alessandro Volta
    6 months ago

    Eventually the firms like Google who track your online activity will decide where you are, and you will start seeing your location in searches. 

  • Bogart9000's avatar
    Bogart9000
    Tuning in
    6 months ago

    Appreciate the responses all.

    Glad it's not an unknown occurrence.  I'll wait and see if it gets corrected and shows my own city in the future - I don't mind too much as I know it doesn't impact performance or anything, just odd to see it so far away.