[ncc-services-wg] IP geolocation services

We've recently experienced a storm of customer complaints after starting
to use IP addresses from a new allocation/assignment. The IP block was
earlier in use by a German company. The result is that services like
Google and Yahoo assume users are from Germany and presents content
accordingly. Some users have also reported that they are excluded from
certain services.

A quick web search reveals that this is a pretty common problem.

While not blaming RIPE or the other RIRs, we believe this problem should
be addressed, and that the initiative has to come from the RIRs.

I would like to propose that RIPE NCC works together with other RIRs to
see if it's possible to implement procedures/routines to notify
providers and users of IP geolocation services of new, relocated and
deleted allocations.

Also, one should probably consider if it's a need for a (distributed?)
database with more fine-grained location data than the whois database
currently provides (also, I've been told that licensing issues prohibits
geolocation providers from using the RIR DBs directly, but I've not been
able to verify this).

Apologies in advance if this has been discussed before -- I searched the
archive, but got no hits. 

-- 
-o)  Vegard Svanberg, CTO - Monsternett (www.monsternett.no) 
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