Open chzurb opened 3 weeks ago
ggediminass
commented
3 weeks ago Hello,
Thank you for reaching out to us!
You may see the wrong location on this website because they are using outdated databases which may be updated over time.
Each database has a different update period so it may take some time to display correct location information.
Meanwhile, we can assure you that this IP - 91.205.106.138 - is indeed in France.
Let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with.
chzurb
commented
1 week ago You may see the wrong location on this website because they are using outdated databases which may be updated over time.
Thanks for the reply. But isn't they you aka nordvpn? What I mean is that i wget the list of ip addresses from you directly and i create a docker container with them within minutes so how can they be outdated within a couple of hours of creating the image?
Are you saying that the ovpn zip file changes so frequently and so drastically that i need to rebuild an image that downloads a fresh ovpn zip file every time i try to connect to one of your servers? I mean if i'm connecting to a FR ip that you provide in the ovpn zip file how exactly is it that it's reporting i'm connecting to a different IP address in the USA? How can the ovpn file with a FR IP address connect to one of your servers (the logs say so!) which is in France but somehow report otherwise. That just doesn't make much sense.
To be clear, are you saying that I'm actually am connecting to FR but somehow only the IP test is erroneously reporting it's in the USA. That the site I want to connect to is in FR and has GEO restrictions but will still work regardless of the IP test being shown?
Sorry, but i don't understand which db is being updated here. Perhaps that would help clear this up. Is there some "external" geo db that nordvpn updates and that geo ip lookup services "subscribe" to and use to resolve the countries?
Thanks
pyro12
commented
1 week ago Whoever owns ifconfig.co is subscribed to cloudflare and whois shows its owner is private. As far a I know, the owner is not NordVPN. Their database is apparently not up-to-date or just wrong. I think getting an IP geolocation is similar to resolving a DNS request where sometimes not all the servers have the same info and updated info has to sort of permutate from database to database.
You can check these databases. Maybe it'll make you feel better:
https://www.whatismyip.com/ip-address-lookup/
https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-web-services-demo?ip_address=91.205.106.138
chzurb
commented
1 week ago Ok. Thanks for the response.
I will go back and try this week and see how this goes.
Note though, that the report of the IP address was only one of the problems mentioned above. The other mentioned is that the vpn connections just stop intermittently working with no rhyme or reason. But then start working again "when they feel like it". The log shows it's connected but it's just not stable enough at times.
Fwiw, I wanted to use an API and not a website to check the IP because my scripts that use the VPN need to run unattended and I thought checking the country via API was just a way to confirm a connection was up and connected to the right country as well as logging that info since the script will be connecting to different countries depending on the operation when it runs.
pyro12
commented
1 week ago @chzurb I've been using ifconfig.co to check my connected location the past couple of days. I'm currently connected to one of PIA's US servers and ifconfig.co says Romania. It's seems like a neat tool, but unfortunately I don't think it's reliable in general - not just with NordVPN's IP's. It's simply not up-to-date or accurate. Too bad.
I found a linux package called geoiplookup (geoip-bin (apt) or just geoip (pacman)) that seems to be more accurate. I don't know how to keep it up-to-date or if it updates itself yet, but if I use ifconfig.co to get actual IP and then use geoiplookup to get country my early testing seems accurate:
geoiplookup "$(curl ifconfig.co)"
YMMV but it's something to try.
I used your recommended Dockerfile here:
https://support.nordvpn.com/hc/en-us/articles/20465811527057-How-to-build-the-NordVPN-Docker-image
but changed the version of the nordvpn CLI v 3.17.4 (vs 3.17.1 in the above link) and then built and ran the image.
After spending 2+ solid days, I could never get your nordvpn CLI to work no matter what I did including trying it in it's native
nordlynx"technology mode" and then switching toopenvpn"technology mode".So I decided to just run "vanilla" openvpn client and use your config files directly as described here
https://support.nordvpn.com/hc/en-us/articles/20164827795345-Connect-to-NordVPN-using-Linux-Terminal
I was amazed when it "just worked like that" compared to the CLI! Yesterday I was able to switch between French and German VPNs easily by using the different ovpn config files in your ovpn.zip file. I tested that the IP addresses and countries were indeed switching to the appropriate country specific IP addresses and using curl utilities to confirm that those IPs were indeed the countries I expected using.
But when I went to reconnect today with either French or German country ovpn file just like yesterday, no matter what european specific country cfg file i use it is always logging into the United States when i connect with vanilla openvpn client???
I can see in the logs that it does connect and that there are no errors (not to my eye anyway). And the log output does show that it is indeed connecting to the French or German country specific IP specified inside the country specific OVPN file. But after it connects i'm always being routed through the United States and at some other USA public IP other than the FR or DE specific Ip/county to be expected from the OVPN Fr or De cfg file!?
Also the vanilla openvpn connection connected and worked 100% yesterday but today it is unreliable. Today the logs show no errors and it always connects, but
pingandcurloften do not work which means the basic networking is screwed up. If I wait long enough, eventually the networking starts to work again (probably a timeout waiting to reset something?). Alternatively I can try to kill the openvpn client and start it anew and sometimes that just works. Regardless it's unreliable.Any thoughts? on either:
Here's some sample output:
first this is the expected ip i should connect to in France
i go to run that profile
The logs will show everything is fine but networking is NOT working (on this occasion)
If i wait a bit (no rhyme or reason in terms of how long that wait might be), ping comes back everything is working again.
But now the country is NOT ip 31.187.69.23 / France like the ovpn cfg file and the log show it is. It is USA!!!? Note that If the connection had worked from the start it would give me the same exact USA and NOT France. And if i kill the openvpn client and run the same invocation to France over and over again, it will always be the USA but the USA IP address changes randomly on each invocation.
I kill the openvpn client and I'm back to my home ctry and correct public ip (redacted here)
As I said yesterday it "did" connect correctly to Fr/De vpn servers, using the same exact commands specified here and there "were no unreliable connections"
Here's the logfile from the above connection session
Thanks