The geolocation problem with Starlink's IP address and the uncertainty of Starlink's location information
IP addresses and other information are used to determine the region in which a device connected to the internet is located. Jeff Houston, chief scientist at APNIC, the regional internet registry responsible for the Asia-Pacific region, and a former scientist involved in the early construction of the internet between universities in Australia, pointed out the problem of uncertainty in location information for devices connected to Starlink, a global satellite network.
ISP Column - September 2025
APNIC is investigating whether it can track the market share of internet service providers (ISPs) within each country's economy, and is using geolocation data, such as IP addresses and Google ad impressions, as a metric. However, the results are questionable because they rely on the highly unlikely assumption that a user connects to a single ISP.
In particular, the assumption that an ISP has jurisdiction over a single region or country seems to break down with the existence of satellite services like Starlink.
Because Starlink provides its retail service using its own assigned IP addresses, the aforementioned measurement method seems to be able to roughly identify Starlink users. However, when Houston and his colleagues measured data in Yemen, a country with an estimated population of 35 million and 10 million internet users, they found that Starlink was by far the most popular, with approximately 6.2 million users. In second place was the government-owned Public Telecommunications Corporation, with an estimated 3.4 million users.
In Yemen, the Houthis once had a monopoly on ISPs, and many Yemenis are said to have jumped on Starlink, which became available in 2024, to avoid censorship and slow internet connections. However, the number of users is still so high that it raises questions.
According to Houston, one reason for this estimate is the volume of shipping traffic in the Red Sea. Starlink's geolocation data attempts to map every IP address to a country, so even if a ship using Starlink is at sea, it's assigned a land-mapped IP address. As a result, it's possible that a Yemeni IP address is being picked up. However, he said that calculating that people at sea alone generate roughly 50,000 impressions per day is a bit of a stretch, so this may not be the only factor.
Another possibility is that Starlink's location data doesn't reflect reality: Starlink's coverage map shows that it has national operating approval in Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Israel, Jordan, and Somalia, but not in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, or Ethiopia.
There have been numerous reports of Starlink resellers in these unapproved countries redistributing Starlink kits acquired in other countries, including Yemen, where illegal kits were traded before the government approved the service.
SpaceX's satellite communications service 'Starlink' kits are reportedly being illegally traded - GIGAZINE
If this is true, it is quite possible that users from neighboring countries such as Saudi Arabia are using Starlink registered in Yemen.
Yemen is one of many countries. Starlink's geolocation data-based ad delivery data covers 152 countries, but in 21 countries, Starlink accounts for more than 10% of ad delivery, a figure that raises some questions.
Houston said, 'Several factors are likely to have overestimated Starlink usage in the country, distorting domestic ISP market forecasts as a result. The widespread use of global roaming services using satellite services raises fundamental questions about IP location data and its role. Does it refer to the user's precise physical location? Or does it refer to a national border someone has drawn on a map? In this case, do we need a new location code for locations over the ocean? What is the definition of 'over the ocean' in the first place? What about the sky? APNIC Labs has decided to overwrite Starlink geolocation data that references the above countries and instead assign this portion of Starlink geolocation data an 'unclassified' designation.'
Related Posts:
in Web Service, Posted by log1p_kr