[OpenIPMap] Geolocating remote peerings at IXPs

[Baptiste Jonglez]

Hi,

How does OpenIPMap handle remote peerings at IXPs?  Currently, when an
address is identified as belonging to an IXP (e.g. AMS-IX), it is
geolocated at the location of the IXP (e.g. Amsterdam), and the UI doesn't
allow users to change the location.

However, due to remote peerings, the actual router might be located
somewhere completely different.  For instance, the following addresses:
80.249.211.136 and 2001:7f8:1:0:a500:19:8435:1 belong to the AMS-IX range,
but the routers are physically located in Lyon, France (as indicated by
latency + external knowledge).

Would it make sense to allow editing the location of addresses in IXP
ranges?  There might be some issues when two routers doing remote peering
appear as consecutive hops in a traceroute with their IXP addresses
(unlikely, but maybe possible?).  In that case, the link on the map would
indicate a direct connection between the two routers (e.g. Belfast and
Lyon), while the actual link goes through the peering fabric (e.g. in
Amsterdam).

That being said, the problem is more general: the L2 link between any two
neighbouring routers might take an arbitrary geographical path, but this
is not taken into account by only geolocating routers.  But since it's
difficult to have access to this information in general (IXPs are a
special case where it's easier), that's probably ok.

Thanks,
Baptiste
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