IP Geolocation

Explanation

IP geolocation is the technique of determining a user's approximate geographic location (country, region, city) from their public IP address. Every device connected to the internet is assigned an IP address by its internet service provider (ISP). IP address blocks are registered to specific organizations and geographic regions through the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and regional registries. Streaming services use IP geolocation databases (MaxMind, IP2Location, and proprietary databases) to enforce territorial content licenses — if your IP address is assigned to Germany, you see the German content catalog. IP geolocation is not perfectly accurate: database errors, new IP assignments, and ISP routing choices can cause mismatches. Accuracy is approximately 95% at the country level and 80% at the city level according to MaxMind's published benchmarks.