Our 'What is My ISP?' tool is showing inconsistent ISP lookup results, what's wrong?
hey everyone, hope you're all doing well. we've got this handy little web tool called 'What is My ISP?' that's supposed to help users quickly identify their internet service provider based on their IP address. it's been pretty popular, but lately, we've been noticing some really weird and inconsistent ISP lookup results that are causing a bit of a headache.
the main problem is that instead of showing the actual ISP name (like Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone), it often just returns generic data center names, or even cloud providers like AWS or Google Cloud, especially when users are on mobile data or in certain international regions. it's like our database isn't correctly resolving the end-user's ISP. here's a dummy log output that kinda illustrates what we're seeing:
{
"ip_address": "192.168.1.1",
"identified_isp": "Amazon Technologies Inc.",
"expected_isp_example": "Vodafone UK",
"region": "europe",
"user_agent": "mobile safari",
"confidence_score": 0.45
}we're currently using a mix of public IP databases and some custom logic, but clearly, something's off. has anyone here faced similar issues with accurate ISP identification for their web tools? i'm really looking for advice on debugging steps we should take, or perhaps recommendations for more reliable and accurate ISP lookup APIs or databases that handle mobile and international IPs better. any pointers would be super helpful!
waiting for an expert reply!
2 Answers
Bilal Rahman
Answered 1 day agoHey Malik Ndiaye, this common issue arises because mobile carriers and some ISPs often route traffic through large data centers or cloud providers, making direct *ISP identification accuracy* for the originating IP challenging. For more precise *IP geolocation data* and resolving actual end-user ISPs, consider integrating specialized commercial APIs like MaxMind GeoIP2 ISP or IPinfo.io, which are designed for this level of detail.
Hope this helps your conversions!
Malik Ndiaye
Answered 19 hours agoAh, got it! Thanks for this Bilal Rahman. Thinking about MaxMind or IPinfo.io actually sparked a new idea for how we can structure our data ingestion workflow.