



Network Working Group                                         J. Iyengar
Internet-Draft                                                          
Intended status: Informational                              J. Livingood
Expires: 10 October 2026                                                
                                                                T. Pauly
                                                            8 April 2026


         Report from the IAB Workshop on IP Address Geolocation
                  draft-iab-ip-geo-workshop-report-01

Abstract

   The IAB Workshop on IP Address Geolocation (IP-GEO) was held from
   December 3-5, 2025, as a three-day virtual meeting.  It covered the
   use cases and background on using IP addresses as indicators of
   geolocation, explored various problems and challenges that exist in
   that ecosystem, and discussed future directions and opportunities to
   improve or replace the current practices.

About This Document

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   The latest revision of this draft can be found at
   https://intarchboard.github.io/draft-iab-ip-geo-workshop-report/
   draft-iab-ip-geo-workshop-report.html.  Status information for this
   document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-
   ip-geo-workshop-report/.

   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/intarchboard/draft-iab-ip-geo-workshop-report.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."




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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 10 October 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.1.  About this workshop report content  . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Current uses of IP geolocation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Why is IP geolocation used? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       3.1.1.  Localized and Relevant Content  . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       3.1.2.  Targeted Advertising  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       3.1.3.  Network Optimization and Server Selection . . . . . .   5
       3.1.4.  Content Rights Management and Licensing . . . . . . .   5
       3.1.5.  Fraud Detection and Security  . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
       3.1.6.  Regulatory and Legal Compliance . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.2.  What are the current IP geolocation mechanisms? . . . . .   6
     3.3.  What does IP geolocation mean?  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  IP geolocation gaps & issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.1.  Architectural issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.2.  Geofeed gaps and inaccuracies . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.3.  Ecosystem issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     4.4.  Location-based issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     4.5.  Privacy issues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   5.  Considering the future of geolocation . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.1.  Why should IP geolocation change? . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.2.  In what ways could IP geolocation change? . . . . . . . .  12
     5.3.  Considerations for future work  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.4.  Further work and consideration is needed  . . . . . . . .  13
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   8.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   Appendix A.  Position Papers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
   Appendix B.  Workshop Participatns  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   Appendix C.  Workshop Program Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20




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1.  Introduction

   The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) holds occasional workshops
   designed to consider long-term issues and strategies for the
   Internet, and to suggest future directions for the Internet
   architecture.  This long-term planning function of the IAB is
   complementary to the ongoing engineering efforts performed by working
   groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

   Many services on the Internet map client IP addresses to a particular
   geolocation.  For exmaple, they might infer that traffic originating
   from a particular IP address means the traffic originates from a
   particular city.  This practice is widespread even though IP
   addresses are not designed or guaranteed to have a singular or fixed
   location associated with them.

   Use of IP geolocation has significant impact on the architecture and
   realities of deploying systems on the Internet, but is frequently not
   documented or incompletely documented in standards.

   The IAB convened a virtual workshop on IP Address Geolocation from
   December 3-5, 2025.  The workshop aimed to:

   *  Understand the current use cases for publishing, discovering, and
      consuming IP address geolocation data (Section 3)

   *  Explore areas for improvement, both in ways to update or replace
      IP geolocation mechanisms (Section 4)

   *  Consider mechanisms that satisfy the use cases without relying on
      geolocating IP addresses (Section 5)

1.1.  About this workshop report content

   This document is a report on the proceedings of the workshop.  The
   views and positions documented in this report are expressed during
   the workshop by participants and do not necessarily reflect IAB's
   views and positions.

   Furthermore, the content of the report comes from presentations given
   by workshop participants and notes taken during the discussions,
   without interpretation or validation.  Thus, the content of this
   report follows the flow and dialogue of the workshop but does not
   attempt to capture a consensus.







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2.  Conventions and Definitions

   Throughout this document, the following terms are used:

   *  "IP geolocation" is used to refer to the notion of mapping an IP
      address to one or more physical locations.

   *  A "geofeed" refers to a file that provides IP geolocation
      information.  In this document, this is usually specifically
      referring to the format defined in [GEOFEED].

3.  Current uses of IP geolocation

   The initial discussion of the workshop focused on identifying the
   current use cases for IP geolocation, and how they interact with
   today's mechanisms and ecosystem around IP geolocation.

3.1.  Why is IP geolocation used?

   Some of the identified use cases were focused on optimizations to
   user experience or network behavior, such as:

   *  Automatically choosing appropriate language or regional settings
      for content

   *  Providing relevant nearby content (for searches or serving
      advertisements)

   *  Optimizing network routes and server selection, generally used to
      optimize Content Delivery Network (CDNs)

   For these use cases, errors in IP geolocation cause annoyance or
   performance issues, but are generally recoverable (the user can
   change their location preference or update their search).

   Other use cases treat the accuracy of the IP geolocation as a more
   critical piece of information:

   *  Enforcing legal or compliance-related requirements

   *  Enforcing contractual requirements between corporations

   *  Providing information for disaster relief or law enforcement when
      other location signals are unavailable

   IP geolocation is often not the only signal used to satisfy these use
   cases, but it is often used as an important piece of them.




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   All of these use cases are relying on IP geolocation being a passive
   and implicit signal, without explicit intent being communicated on
   network connections.

   Details of some of these use cases are included below.

3.1.1.  Localized and Relevant Content

   As discussed in [KLINE], one of the major motivations for the
   development of the current geofeed format [GEOFEED] was to improve
   how search results were displayed based on client IP addresses.  When
   users are performing searches or accessing sites that localize
   content, and the IP geolocation is incorrect, the user may be
   presented with content that is not relevant (seeing results for a far
   away city when searching for "pizza near me") or isn't localized
   appropriately (seeing content in an unexpected language, or prices in
   an unexpected currency).

   In the case of the development of [GEOFEED], these issues were seen
   when deploying IPv6, highlighting that the ecosystem had mainly only
   mapped out IPv4 addresses previously.

3.1.2.  Targeted Advertising

   The ad-tech ecosystem relies on geolocation to serve localized
   advertisements.  This use represents the highest volume of
   geolocation queries globally.

3.1.3.  Network Optimization and Server Selection

   In general, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and cloud providers
   route traffic from clients based on optimizing network topological
   distance, but IP geolocation is sometimes used as an input to DNS-
   based routing systems to assist in server selection (see [NYGREN] and
   [BROWN]).  Misalignment here results in suboptimal routing and
   increased latency for users.

3.1.4.  Content Rights Management and Licensing

   A primary driver for IP geolocation remains the enforcement of
   territorial licensing agreements for streaming video, which is the
   largest volume of data at peak hour on the internet today.  Streaming
   services and media broadcasters rely heavily on IP-to-location
   mapping to restrict content availability based on country or region
   (Geo-blocking).  Participants noted that this creates a high-stakes
   environment where accuracy is directly tied to contractual
   compliance.




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3.1.5.  Fraud Detection and Security

   Financial institutions and identity providers use geolocation as a
   signal for risk assessment.  "Impossible travel" (a user logging in
   from two distant countries within a short timeframe) or traffic
   originating from sanctioned regions are standard triggers for
   security alerts.

3.1.6.  Regulatory and Legal Compliance

   Operators increasingly use IP geolocation to comply with local laws,
   including:

   *  Gambling and Betting regulations: Restricting access to users
      within specific jurisdictions.

   *  Taxation: Determining the applicable VAT or sales tax based on the
      consumer's location.

   *  Law Enforcement: Investigating cybercrime by mapping IP addresses
      to physical jurisdictions for warrant service.

3.2.  What are the current IP geolocation mechanisms?

   Geofeeds are defined by [GEOFEED] as CSV-formatted mappings from IP
   address subnets to locations, by country/region and city.  [RFC9632]
   additionally defines how to discover this data and to authenticate it
   using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI).

   Often, servers that are checking IP geolocation information are not
   directly consuming geofeed information, but instead use the services
   of one or more IP geolocation providers.  These services provide not
   only a mapping from IP address to location, but add in other
   information, such as notions of IP address "reputation" (indicating
   if they think this IP address represents traffic from a human user,
   an automated bot, or a malicious attacker) or a categorization
   (indicating if an address is associated with proxied or VPN traffic).

   IP geolocation providers use various signals to improve the accuracy
   of their mapping from IP address to location, and have notions of
   confidence in the validity of the mapping.  The workshop noted that
   various providers won't necessarily agree on mappings; and, even when
   they do agree, that does not guarantee that the mapping is accurate.
   Additionally, the certainty around a location mapping is not
   something expressed in a standard format for geofeeds, so ambiguity
   is hidden.





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   The workshop discussion noted that current mechanisms generally
   assume that there is a single (generally stable) location associated
   with an IP address.  This is flawed for various reasons: an
   associated location may change (as in cellular networks or satellite
   networks), and often there may be many users at different locations
   behind a single address.

3.3.  What does IP geolocation mean?

   One of the key points that was raised in discussion was that
   different use cases and different parties involved in using IP
   geolocation can have vastly different assumptions about what a
   particular IP-address-to-location mapping means.  For any use case or
   deployment, a question needs to be asked: what is the claim being
   made about the IP geolocation mapping?

   There are various possible interpretations of a mapping.  The
   location could mean:

   *  The physical location of a user

   *  The location of a network egress

   *  The location of network infrastructure

   *  The regulatory jurisdiction associated with a network

   Geofeeds provide mappings of IP addresses to locations, but they do
   not define any ontology to describe what these mappings are claiming.

4.  IP geolocation gaps & issues

   The workshop also focused discussion around identifying challenges
   with the status quo mechanisms, specifically looking at gaps in
   current solutions and issues that they raise.

   These issues fall into different categories, detailed here.

4.1.  Architectural issues

   At an achitectural level, IP addresses are not designed to be
   indications of physical location.  This point was brought up in many
   contexts.  This underlying issue causes various problems:

   *  Geolocation effectiveness is reduced; accuracy issues often stem
      from the IP address being a poor indicator of location due to not
      having stable location or a one-to-one relationship with users.




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   *  Privacy and lack of consent; the passive nature of looking at IP
      addresses and mapping them to locations means that users can have
      their location targeted without their knowledge, consent, or
      ability to opt out.  Non-consensual geolocation also has the
      second-order effect of IP geolocation providers profiling internet
      users through undisclosed mechanisms to increase geolocation
      accuracy.

   *  Lack of support in standardization; IP geolocation is a very
      impactful part of deployment realities and heavily influences the
      experience users have, but changes to network protocols don't
      necessarily account for the impact on IP geolocation.  This is
      seen in cases where deployments as varied as IPv6 address support
      on servers and privacy proxy systems all needed significant work
      and engagement with IP geolocation providers to ensure that user
      experiences still functioned.

   *  Assumptions about the usefulness of geolocation; physical location
      does not necessarily correspond to network topologies, so systems
      assuming that closer physical locations will be faster can be
      detrimental to network performance.

   *  Inconsistent effectiveness for security; IP geolocation is often
      used as an element of security or compliance checks, but often has
      errors and is hard to validate.  It cannot be relied on for
      security properties, but ends up being used as such in some
      scenarios.

4.2.  Geofeed gaps and inaccuracies

   Many of the issues raised were concerned with specifics of geofeeds.
   These take various forms, such as details that cannot currently be
   expressed in geofeeds, or inaccurate content in feeds.

   The issues raised include:

   *  Entries cannot express an address being mapped to multiple
      locations, or express varying levels of confidence in a location
      mapping

   *  Names of regions and cities may not be consistent across geofeeds
      (due to typos, different languages, etc.)

   *  Identities of regions and cities may vary or have problematic
      geopolitical nuances






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   *  False specificity occurs when feeds map an address to a city, but
      the location associated with the address is much bigger than the
      city

   *  Geofeed entries may be blatantly incorrect due to staleness or
      intentional inaccuracies

   *  Geofeeds may be out of date or stale, without a time-to-live or
      refresh mechanism

   Some participants also expressed the diminishing utility of IP
   geolocation for compliance due to issues with accuracy and ease of
   circumvention.  [CLARK]

   Some of the biggest challenges for providing an accurate geofeed are
   in dealing with satellite networks or mobile networks using Carrier-
   Grade NATs (CGNAT).  A client device may have a particular true
   location, but its traffic may exit to the internet via a gateway in a
   different region.  Geo-locating the IP identifies the gateway, not
   the user, rendering the data coarse or misleading for hyper-local
   applications.

   While country-level accuracy in geofeedds is generally high
   (estimated >95%), city-level or coordinate-level accuracy degrades
   significantly.  Participants noted instances where IP geolocation
   defaults to the geographical center of a country or state when
   specific data is missing, creating "digital sinkholes" (e.g., a farm
   in Kansas mapped to millions of IP addresses).

4.3.  Ecosystem issues

   Some issues relate to the deployment and commercial realities of the
   IP geolocation ecosystem.

   IP geolocation providers currently use differing proprietary formats
   and techniques.  Methodologies for determining location are
   proprietary, and there is no standardized feedback loop for Internet
   Service Providers (ISPs) to correct erroneous data in third-party
   databases.

   Additionally, updating the version of a IP geolocation database used
   by a server is asynchronous, and can be a manual process.  When there
   is a major change, such as when an IP address block is transferred
   from an ISP in Asia to one in Europe, the addresses may remain
   "located" in Asia in some databases for weeks or months.






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   With IPv4 exhaustion, the secondary market for address space is
   active and exacerbates these problems.  IP address blocks are
   frequently sold and moved globally.  The "legacy" location data often
   sticks to these blocks in WHOIS registries or static datasets,
   leading to persistent misidentification of the new owners' locations.

4.4.  Location-based issues

   Assigning geolocation to addresses is fraught with issues around
   location borders.  The discussion covered anecdotes of incorrect
   behavior that came from mobile devices being used near jurisdictional
   borders between two countries, where the device's IP geolocation
   could frequently "jump" between countries.  Similarly, on borders
   between timezones, the correct behavior is often ambiguous if derived
   from IP addresses alone.

4.5.  Privacy issues

   As discussed in [RFC6973], IP addresses can be used as identifiers to
   correlate user activity and reveal user identity.  IP addresses are
   often considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and the
   correlation to geolocation makes this very sensitive information that
   can be correlated to other metadata that identifies users.

   Commercial services enrich their datasets to improve their location
   estimates, and can often succeed in pinpointing approximate
   geographical coordinates and postal code of a user.

   The source IP addresses of a connection established by a client
   device working on behalf of a user does not come along with any
   specific consent for how the IP address will be used, and does not
   imply intent for geolocation or otherwise.  In essence: Since IP
   addresses were not designed for geolocating end-users, IP geolocation
   amounts to abuse of network-layer metadata to derive private
   information about internet users without their knowledge or consent.

   Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or proxies (such as privacy proxies
   discussed in [RFC9614]) allow users to anonymize their specific IP
   addresses to avoid correlation, and are often used partly for this
   purpose.  [DUTKOWSKA-ZUK]

   Sometimes VPNs or proxies intentionally obfuscate or change how the
   user is represented to IP geolocation providers; but other
   deployments of privacy services do use geofeeds to preserve the
   general user location to avoid user experience or compliance issues.






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5.  Considering the future of geolocation

   The final day of the workshop focused on next steps around IP
   geolocation, both in how to improve mechanisms and in how to build
   mechanisms that address the use cases in new ways.

   One key recognition from the workshop was that IP geolocation, and
   the ecosystem around it, isn't going to go away or disappear.  While
   it was not necessarily an intentional part of the Internet
   architecture, large parts of how the Internet functions have been
   established based on assumptions.

   However, it was also recognized that the role and functionality of IP
   geolocation can change, and in many ways ought to change.  This
   section discusses some of the considerations raised, and suggests
   next steps.

5.1.  Why should IP geolocation change?

   Various motivations for changing the status quo of the IP geolocation
   ecosystem were raised:

   *  Existing geofeeds have technical gaps that need addressing in
      order to scale well and continue to be used effectively

   *  New network deployments, such as satellite networks and privacy
      proxies, are stretching and challenging the status quo mechanisms

   *  Pressure from new policies or regulations add requirements for
      accurate assessment of client location, which IP addresses cannot
      always provide

   *  The bar for security and privacy is increasing, challenging the
      use of passive identifiers like IP addresses being used to tag
      location

   *  There are already ways to perform consensual geolocation at the
      application layer, such as with APIs that meet the W3C Geolocation
      specifications.

   These various motivations and pressures are often in conflict, and
   create requirements in different directions.  Economic and regulatory
   incentives have shaped the status quo mechanisms, and will continue
   to shape the evolution of this space.

   The technical community, and the various stakeholders in the
   ecosystem, play an important role in deciding how to handle these
   pressures and drive the change in the space of IP geolocation.



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5.2.  In what ways could IP geolocation change?

   Two high-level categories of changes were discussed.

   First, there are a number of ways in which geofeeds themselves can be
   improved:

   *  Add the ability to express infrastructure vs. user locations

   *  Get beyond the assumption that an IP address always maps to a
      single location

   *  Better handle the dynamic nature of geolocation (time-to-live
      indications, timestamps, live updates to feeds)

   *  More accurately represent the granularity and specificity of
      geolocation mappings; be able to express certainty levels

   *  Improve tooling for publishing, validating, and consuming geofeeds

   *  Improve measurements for determining accurate geolocation

   *  Rely more on the RPKI to more reliably verify location claims

   Second, and more ambitiously, the community can consider alternative
   solutions to the use cases behind IP geolocation that do not rely on
   IP address mapping.  [SZAMONEK], [LAOUAR], and [PAULY] propose
   various ways forward here.  These explore ways to let users provide
   location hints with consent, and involve trying to provide explicit
   signals that involve trust and verifiability.

   Across both of these categories, communicating information with more
   intentionality and clarity is a key change.

5.3.  Considerations for future work

   When looking toward future work, the workshop discussion raised some
   key points to consider:

   *  The community should work to explain clearly what geofeeds and IP
      geolocation are able to solve, and what problems they are ill-
      suited for.

   *  As new technologies are introduced (either updated geofeeds or new
      alternative mechanisms), there need to be clear plans for
      transitions and incremental adoption.





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   *  New solutions need to avoid "ossification" and build in ways to
      continue to evolve and update.

   *  New solutions should be careful designed to avoid creating worse
      privacy problems.  For example, a pressure to have explicit
      signals for location could lead to increased sharing of more
      specific user location coordinates (such as from GPS data).

   *  It is unlikely that any one new technical solution can address the
      various use cases that currently passively use IP geolocation.
      Different technical solutions will be fit for purpose for
      different use cases, and will not be one-size-fits-all.

5.4.  Further work and consideration is needed

   A final conclusion of the workshop was that collaboration and
   discussion amongst the various stakeholders in this space will be a
   necessary part of making technical improvements.  Not all of the
   stakeholders in this space are currently actively participating in
   standards discussions within the IETF, but standards work would
   benefit from working on improvements in this space.

   Some of the stakeholders include, but are not limited to:

   *  IP geolocation providers

   *  Client device platforms

   *  Content publishers

   *  Network operators

   *  Data brokers

   *  Enterprises

   *  Firewall operators and vendors

   *  VPN / proxy operators and vendors

   *  IP address leasers

   *  Policymakers

   *  End users

   The exact shape of a forum for this community is not yet determined,
   but this report encourages further work and discussion in this space.



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6.  Security Considerations

   This document is a workshop report and does not impact the security
   of the Internet.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

8.  Informative References

   [ABLEY]    Abley, J., "Geo-Network Operations at Cloudflare",
              November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-
              ipgeows-paper-geo-network-operations-at-cloudflare-
              00.pdf>.

   [BARNES]   Barnes, R., "IP Geolocation is Critical for Compliance",
              November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-
              ipgeows-paper-ip-geolocation-is-critical-for-compliance-
              01.pdf>.

   [BROWN]    Brown, J., "Moving Beyond Geographic Inference", November
              2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              moving-beyond-geographic-inference-00.pdf>.

   [CLARK]    Clark, J., "geocomply.com", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              geocomplycom-00.pdf>.

   [CROGHAN]  Croghan, T., "The Geolocation Conundrum for Small ISPs",
              November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-
              ipgeows-paper-the-geolocation-conundrum-for-small-isps-
              00.pdf>.

   [DUTKOWSKA-ZUK]
              Dutkowska-Zuk, A., Hounsel, A., Morrill, A., Xiong, A.,
              Chetty, M., and N. Feamster, "How and Why People Use
              Virtual Private Networks", August 2022,
              <https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec22-dutkowska-
              zuk.pdf>.

   [ELKINS]   Elkins, N., Nguyen, M., and B. Jouris, "Bridging the Gaps
              in IP Geolocation: Strengthening Detection and Defense
              Against Cyber Threats", December 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              bridging-the-gaps-in-ip-geolocation-strengthening-
              detection-and-defense-against-cyber-threats-00.txt>.




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   [FAYED]    Fayed, M., "Does IP geolocation answer the right
              questions?", November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/
              slides-ipgeows-paper-does-ip-geolocation-answer-the-right-
              questions-00.pdf>.

   [GAO]      Gao, P., Lee, E., and Y. Zhang, "On the Use, Challenges,
              Alternatives of IP Geolocation Data", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-on-the-
              use-challenges-alternatives-of-ip-geolocation-data-
              00.pdf>.

   [GASSER]   Gasser, O., Leung, W., and M. Mouchet, "On the Use,
              Challenges, Alternatives of IP Geolocation Data", November
              2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              challenges-of-working-with-geofeeds-00.pdf>.

   [GEOFEED]  Kline, E., Duleba, K., Szamonek, Z., Moser, S., and W.
              Kumari, "A Format for Self-Published IP Geolocation
              Feeds", RFC 8805, DOI 10.17487/RFC8805, August 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8805>.

   [HOSFELT]  Hosfelt, R., Haberman, B., Jaeggli, J., and S. Strowes,
              "Position Paper by Fastly", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              position-paper-by-fastly-for-iab-workshop-on-ip-address-
              geolocation-00.pdf>.

   [HOWARD]   Howard, L., "IP geolocation paper", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-ip-
              geolocation-paper-00.pdf>.

   [HUSTON]   Huston, G., "Geolocation and Starlink", September 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              geolocation-and-starlink-00.txt>.

   [IZHIKEVICH]
              Izhikevich, K., Du, B., Tran, M., Rao, S., Ukani, A., and
              L. Izhikevich, "Trust, But Verify, Operator-Reported
              Geolocation", November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/
              slides-ipgeows-paper-trust-but-verify-operator-reported-
              geolocation-00.pdf>.

   [KATIRA]   Katira, D. and G. Grover, "Incorporating user agency in
              internet geolocation", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              incorporating-user-agency-in-internet-geolocation-00.pdf>.





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   [KHAN]     Khan, K., "From Surveillance to Consent: A Privacy-First
              Approach to IP Geolocation", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-from-
              surveillance-to-consent-a-privacy-first-approach-to-ip-
              geolocation-00.pdf>.

   [KISTELEKI]
              Kisteleki, R., "RIPE IPmap - The RIPE NCC’s Approach to
              Infrastructure IP Geolocation", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-ripe-
              ipmap-the-ripe-nccs-approach-to-infrastructure-ip-
              geolocation-00.pdf>.

   [KLINE]    Kline, E., "Anecdotal History of RFC 8805", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              anecdotal-history-of-rfc-00.pdf>.

   [LAOUAR]   Laouar, A., Desgeorges, L., Schmitt, P., and F. Bronzino,
              "Rethinking Geolocalization on the Internet", November
              2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              rethinking-geolocalization-on-the-internet-00.pdf>.

   [MATHUR]   Mathur, S., "Improvements Ideas from an IP Geolocation API
              Provider", November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/
              slides-ipgeows-paper-improvements-ideas-from-an-ip-
              geolocation-api-provider-00.pdf>.

   [MUKHERJEE]
              Mukherjee, D., "Gaps and problems in current IP-
              Geolocation Approaches", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-gaps-
              and-problems-in-current-ip-geolocation-approaches-00.pdf>.

   [NYGREN]   Nygren, E. and R. Dhanidina, "Akamai Position Paper for
              2025 IAB Workshop on IP Address Geolocation", November
              2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              akamai-position-paper-for-iab-workshop-on-ip-address-
              geolocation-ip-geo-00.pdf>.

   [OWENS]    Owens, N., "Starlink", October 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              position-paper-starlink-00.pdf>.

   [PAN]      Pan, J. and J. Zhao, "GeoFeed in the wild: A case study on
              StarlinkISP.net", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-geofeed-
              in-the-wild-a-case-study-on-starlinkispnet-00.pdf>.




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   [PAULY]    Pauly, T., Schinazi, D., McMullin, C., and D. Mitchell,
              "The IP Geolocation HTTP Client Hint", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-the-ip-
              geolocation-http-client-hint-00.pdf>.

   [RAMANATHAN]
              Ramanathan, A. and S. A. Jyothi, "Systematic Detection and
              Correction of IP Geolocation Anomalies in Network
              Measurements", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              systematic-detection-and-correction-of-ip-geolocation-
              anomalies-in-network-measurements-00.pdf>.

   [RFC6973]  Cooper, A., Tschofenig, H., Aboba, B., Peterson, J.,
              Morris, J., Hansen, M., and R. Smith, "Privacy
              Considerations for Internet Protocols", RFC 6973,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6973, July 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6973>.

   [RFC9614]  Kühlewind, M., Pauly, T., and C. A. Wood, "Partitioning as
              an Architecture for Privacy", RFC 9614,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9614, July 2024,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9614>.

   [RFC9632]  Bush, R., Candela, M., Kumari, W., and R. Housley,
              "Finding and Using Geofeed Data", RFC 9632,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9632, August 2024,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9632>.

   [SCHATTE]  Schatte, D., "IAB Workshop on IP Address Geolocation",
              December 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-
              ipgeows-paper-iab-workshop-on-ip-address-geolocation-
              daniel-schatte-00.pdf>.

   [SHARMA]   Sharma, O. P., "Position Paper for IAB Workshop on IP
              Address Geolocation", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-
              position-paper-for-iab-workshop-on-ip-address-geolocation-
              ipgeows-00.pdf>.

   [SZAMONEK] Szamonek, Z., "The Need for an Alternative to IP-Based
              Geolocation", November 2025, <https://www.ietf.org/slides/
              slides-ipgeows-paper-the-need-for-an-alternative-to-ip-
              based-geolocation-00.pdf>.







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   [TARIQ]    Tariq, M., "IP Address Geolocation – Use Cases, Gaps, and
              Future Directions", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-ip-
              address-geolocation-use-cases-gaps-and-future-directions-
              00.pdf>.

   [VERMEULEN]
              Vermeulen, K., "IP geolocation through the lens of an
              academic: Where do we stand?", November 2025,
              <https://www.ietf.org/slides/slides-ipgeows-paper-ip-
              geolocation-through-the-lens-of-an-academic-where-do-we-
              stand-00.pdf>.

Appendix A.  Position Papers

   30 position papers were accepted to the workshop.  All papers are
   available at https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/ipgeows/materials/
   (https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/ipgeows/materials/).

   The position papers are listed here:

   *  J.  Abley: Geo-Network Operations at Cloudflare [ABLEY]

   *  R.  Barnes: IP Geolocation is Critical for Compliance [BARNES]

   *  J.  Brown: Moving Beyond Geographic Inference [BROWN]

   *  J.  Clark: geocomply.com [CLARK]

   *  T.  Croghan: The Geolocation Conundrum for Small ISPs [CROGHAN]

   *  N.  Elkins, M.  Nguyen, B.  Jouris: Bridging the Gaps in IP
      Geolocation: Strengthening Detection and Defense Against Cyber
      Threats [ELKINS]

   *  M.  Fayed: Does IP geolocation answer the right questions?
      [FAYED]

   *  P.  Gao, E.  Lee, Y.  Zhang: On the Use, Challenges, Alternatives
      of IP Geolocation Data [GAO]

   *  O.  Gasser, W.  Leung, M.  Mouchet: Challenges of Working With
      Geofeeds [GASSER]

   *  R.  Hosfelt, B.  Haberman, J.  Jaeggli, S.  Strowes: Position
      paper by Fastly [HOSFELT]

   *  L.  Howard: IP geolocation paper [HOWARD]



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   *  G.  Huston: Geolocation and Starlink [HUSTON]

   *  K.  Izhikevich, B.  Du, M.  Tran, S.  Rao, A.  Ukani, L.
      Izhikevich: Trust, But Verify, Operator-Reported Geolocation
      [IZHIKEVICH]

   *  D.  Katira, G.  Grover: Incorporating user agency in internet
      geolocation [KATIRA]

   *  K.  Khan: From Surveillance to Consent: A Privacy-First Approach
      to IP Geolocation [KHAN]

   *  R.  Kisteleki: RIPE IPmap - The RIPE NCC’s Approach to
      Infrastructure IP Geolocation [KISTELEKI]

   *  E.  Kline: Anecdotal History of RFC 8805 [KLINE]

   *  A.  Laouar, L.  Desgoerges, P.  Schmitt, F.  Bronzino: Rethinking
      Geolocalization on the Internet [LAOUAR]

   *  S.  Mathur: Improvements Ideas from an IP Geolocation API Provider
      [MATHUR]

   *  D.  Mukherjee: Gaps and problems in current IP-Geolocation
      Approaches [MUKHERJEE]

   *  E.  Nygren, R.  Dhanidina: Akamai Position Paper for 2025 IAB
      Workshop on IP Address Geolocation [NYGREN]

   *  N.  Owens: Starlink [OWENS]

   *  J.  Pan, J.  Zhao: GeoFeed in the wild: A case study on
      StarlinkISP.net [PAN]

   *  T.  Pauly, D.  Schinazi, C.  McMullin, D.  Mitchell: The IP
      Geolocation HTTP Client Hint [PAULY]

   *  A.  Ramanathan, S.  A.  Jyothi: Systematic Detection and
      Correction of IP Geolocation Anomalies in Network Measurements
      [RAMANATHAN]

   *  D.  Schatte: IAB Workshop on IP Address Geolocation [SCHATTE]

   *  O.  P.  Sharma: Position Paper for IAB Workshop on IP Address
      Geolocation [SHARMA]

   *  Z.  Szamonek: The Need for an Alternative to IP-Based Geolocation
      [SZAMONEK]



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   *  M.  Tariq: IP Address Geolocation – Use Cases, Gaps, and Future
      Directions [TARIQ]

   *  K.  Vermeulen: IP geolocation through the lens of an academic:
      Where do we stand?  [VERMEULEN]

Appendix B.  Workshop Participatns

   The workshop participants were Alagappan Ramanathan, Andrew Chen,
   Augustin Laouar, Bill Jouris, Bob Hinden, Brian Haberman, Calvin
   Ardi, Carlos Martinez, Christopher Luna, Cindy Morgan, Daniel
   Schatte, David Schinazi, Debayan Mukherjee, Dhruv Dhody, Divyank
   Katira, Elizabeth Cronan, Enock Lee, Erik Kline, Erik Nygren,
   Francesco Bronzino, Gannon Barnett, Geoff Huston, Glenn Deen,
   Gurshabad Grover, Haniel Abrasos Malik Hayato Kazama, Hiroki
   Kawabata, James Clark, Jamie Sherry, Jana Iyengar, Jason Livingood,
   Jeff Brown, Jianping Pan, Jinwei Zhao, Joe Abley, Joel Jaeggli,
   Jordan Holland, Julien Gamba, Kaitlyn Pellak, Katherine Izhikevich,
   Kevin Phair, Lee Howard, Loïc Desgeorges, Marwan Fayed, Matthew
   Wilder, Max Mouchet, Md.  Kamruzzaman Khan, Mudassar Tariq, Nalini
   Elkins, Nathan Owens, Nobuhiro Takamizawa, Oliver Gasser, Om Prakash
   Sharma, Paul Gao, Richard Barnes, Ricky Hosfelt, Rob Seastrom, Robert
   Kisteleki, Sid Mathur, Stephen Strowes, Suresh Krishnan, Tommy
   Croghan, Tommy Pauly, Warren Kumari, William Leung, Yaozhong Zhang,
   Yoshiki Ishida, and Zoltan Szamonek.

Appendix C.  Workshop Program Committee

   The workshop program committee members were Glenn Deen, Jana Iyengar,
   Mirja Kühlewind, Warren Kumari, Jason Livingood, and Tommy Pauly.

Acknowledgments

   Thanks to all of the workshop participants who attended and
   contributed papers to this effort!

Authors' Addresses

   Jana Iyengar
   Email: jri.ietf@gmail.com


   Jason Livingood
   Email: Jason_Livingood@comcast.com


   Tommy Pauly
   Email: tpauly@apple.com



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