

Ask HN: Geolocation - Google & Linode - pdx

I just noticed something strange and thought I'd throw this out there to the world.<p>As I was doing a google search, I noticed that Google knew that I was in Portland, OR.  That's not that surprising, of course, until it hit me that I was surfing through ssh, and the IP address that Google saw should have been in Dallas, TX, where my Linode server is.  How did Google know I was in Portland?  I don't have the google toobar (hmmm, I am using Chrome, perhaps it's built in?)<p>So, that's the first strange thing.  The second, which is much less mysterious, but still worth mentioning, is that, as I was confirming that other websites saw my linode ip address and not my actual one, I noted that they all thought I was in Absecon, New Jersey, rather than Dallas.  It occurs to me that I have no way to know if Linode actually put my server in Dallas or at one of it's other data centers, even though they tell me it's Dallas, I have no way to check.  I thought about ping times to various Dallas and New Jersey businesses, but that doesn't help, since who knows where they are actually hosted.  How does one find out where a server they are logged into is actually located?
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Skywing
Do a trace route. It should end up at "theplanet", which is a data center in
Dallas.

~~~
pdx
Thanks. Yes, it does.

So, there's just a database error for some Dallas Linode IP addresses that
puts them in New Jersey.

Now, about that Google thing...

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zoomzoom
Do you have any other web services connected to google that are not proxying
through the ssh connection?

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pdx
I considered the fact that I'm logged in to Google on the ssh connected PC,
and I have an Android phone sitting next to me, logged in to the same account.

I logged out of Google on my ssh connected PC, to break that connection
between phone and PC, but my location still said Portland. Of course, perhaps
it's slow to update, or not so easily fooled.

