Confused about GCE ZONES IP Address' Real geographical position

[Ya Yang]

Hi, everyone

I'm a new user of GCE and I know there are 3 zones that we can choose:

asia-east1-a/b

europe-west1-a/b

us-central1-a/b/f

However, no matter what zones I choose, the IP of that zone always shows that it's in the United States. 

I check it from several public IP libraries.

But from several network speed testings among servers globally, IP really matches its zone in GCE.

Does it mean IP library is not correct ? (almost all IP library...)

Or any optimization from GCE side ?

Thanks a lot.  

[Eran Sandler]

I'm only guessing here, but I think Google's network routing is very advanced (BGP and all that routing protocols) which allows it to assign any address they have to any zone they have.

If that is indeed the case, they would obviosuly cannot change the location of the IP addresses in the database fast enough as ephemeral IPs might switch zones all the time (whenever a server is started and stopped).

On top of that I know that Google optimizes networks to GCE instances by taking the user to the closest entry point into the Google network, once its there it will travel within the faster Google network to the server, perform the request, sent it back and go out back to the user from the same point the user entered. So even traceroutes might not have the exact information you would seek as you would only see the entry point into the Google network.

Eran

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[Jimmy Kaplowitz]

Yes, there is no guarantee that a GCE IP address will remain in the same region long-term. They have moved between regions before and may again.

- Jimmy

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[Ya Yang]

Thanks  a lot for your reply.

It means Google will help us to optimize the links so we just need to choose the right zones that we need ?

For example, my instances will connect to other servers in HongKong, Asia. 

I create gce instances in  asia-east1-a/b.

Even though the static IP in asia-east1-a/b shows itself in America, but the link speed between HK and my instances is good.

It's also the same with europe-west1-a/b and us-central1-a/b/f,right ?

[Jimmy Kaplowitz]

It's definitely true that, if you assign an IP address to an instance in one GCE zone, the instance will be running geographically in that zone, and Google's network will be aware that the IP address is in that zone, even if the IP address was originally allocated from a different continent. For example, if an instance in an Asian zone gets an IP address originating from the US regional Internet registry's network blocks, it would not be typical for connections from Asia to cross continents despite the IP.

You're right that currently many geoIP databases do not accout for how Google Cloud Platform manages its IP addresses. I've noticed this too.

- Jimmy

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[Ya Yang]

Much appreciated !

Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge and experience on it.

[Sasha White]

Super glad I found this discussion... This was driving me crazy! As I thought my traffic was going to USA first then EU... And was stressing about the delay implications.. This explains it all.... Thank you so much!

[Paul Nash]

Hi Sasha, so glad you found this old thread, too - it answers some questions that came up here recently, so I'd like to reiterate for future reference:

Jimmy's observation from way back when is still true: Google's IPs are not "bound" in a specific geographical region, and geoIP databases may provide incorrect information about the "location" of an IP coming from Google Cloud.

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Paul R. Nash |

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