1087505 - Incorrect "United Kingdom" tiles shown for Paris office

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

phrawzty/arroway, both of you are seeing the UK tile from Paris. Are both of you testing from the Paris office, and does it normally trigger detection of UK geo?

Comment 1

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #0)
> phrawzty/arroway, both of you are seeing the UK tile from Paris. Are both of
> you testing from the Paris office, and does it normally trigger detection of
> UK geo?

Comment 2

[Stephanie Ouillon [:arroway] (needinfo me)]

Yes, usually when I browse websites when connected to the Mozilla network from the Paris office, I am identified as located in the UK.

Comment 3

[Daniel Maher [:phrawzty]]

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #0)
> phrawzty/arroway, both of you are seeing the UK tile from Paris. Are both of
> you testing from the Paris office, and does it normally trigger detection of
> UK geo?

Yes - for whatever reason, the standard GeoIP databases seem to think that our office's netblock is in the UK.

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

pnkfelix is also running into "United Kingdom" tile. I would guess also from the office. We might look into using a different geo db to see if it helps. Is there a range of IP addresses that are used for the office that we can test with?

Comment 5

[Daniel Maher [:phrawzty]]

(In reply to Ed Lee :Mardak from comment #4)
> pnkfelix is also running into "United Kingdom" tile. I would guess also from
> the office. We might look into using a different geo db to see if it helps.
> Is there a range of IP addresses that are used for the office that we can
> test with?

The tl;dr is that GeoIP localisation is generally crap; when it works it works well enough, but when it's incorrect, it's totally hopeless.

The accuracy of any given GeoIP localisation service really depends on the database being queried.  For example, inputting our IP[1] into iplocation[2] (which searches multiple databases) results in three different locations, none of which are correct (though at least two of them are the right country).  The similarly-named ip2location service thinks we're in Cardiff, Wales.  It's also worth noting that if we query using our IPv6[4] address, the results can also be totally inaccurate - for example, MaxMind[5] (the service that Mozilla uses, in fact) thinks our office is the USA.

It's worth noting that we have no control over any of these databases, and that the methods by which these database are compiled and maintained are opaque at best and inscrutable at worst.

[1] 89.202.203.51
[2] http://www.iplocation.net/
[3] http://www.ip2location.com/
[4] 2001:450:1e:224:197f:6a96:ca34:ee23
[5] https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

We don't use these tiles anymore.