Occasionally, you may notice that your server you create with BitLaunch or our third-party hosts appears to be in a different region to the one you selected when you created it. This usually occurs when using a third-party tool to find the server's location.
The first thing to know is that the region you select during your server setup is always where you server resides. So, why does this issue occur? In short, geolocation IP databases are third-party sources and are often not up to date. BitLaunch and other hosts can reassign a block of IPs to a different region in seconds (though we try to avoid this), but a GeoIP database may take days, weeks or even months to update. This could cause your London server to display as a US one, for example.
Finding a server location
You can confirm the true location of your server by performing a traceroute. You can trace the route packets take from your local IP to the server or from your server to a popular website, such as Google.
Here is an example of a traceroute from a local Windows PC in Denmark to a BitLaunch server in London:
tracert 193.149.187.210
OUTPUT:
Tracing route to 193.149.187.210 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 10.16.0.1
2 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms cph-ix1-cr2-v11.31173.se [141.98.254.65]
3 18 ms 19 ms 18 ms kbn-b1-link.ip.twelve99.net [213.248.85.108]
4 19 ms 24 ms 19 ms ae5.cr0-cph1.ip4.gtt.net [213.254.226.209]
5 40 ms 40 ms 40 ms ae13.cr0-lon1.ip4.gtt.net [89.149.139.162]
6 39 ms 39 ms 39 ms 77.67.124.46
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 42 ms 41 ms 41 ms unassigned.psychz.net [172.107.243.250]
9 38 ms 39 ms 38 ms 193.149.187.210
Trace complete.
You can clearly see from the domain names and IP addresses that our packet travels from the local PC, through servers in Copenhagen, to London, and then eventually to our VPS server.
If you are on Ubuntu Linux, you will need to install traceroute
sudo apt install traceroute
and then use the following command:
traceroute <IP address or domain name>
For example:
traceroute 193.149.187.210
OUTPUT:
traceroute to 193.149.187.210 (193.149.187.210), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.9.0.1 (10.9.0.1) 19.292 ms 19.286 ms 20.034 ms
2 vlan106.as08.cph1.dk.m247.com (89.45.7.121) 20.474 ms 20.046 ms 20.466 ms
3 89.44.212.112 (89.44.212.112) 40.082 ms 40.078 ms 40.074 ms
4 146.70.0.108 (146.70.0.108) 20.437 ms 20.034 ms 20.031 ms
5 ae24-100.alb2nqp8.dk.ip.tdc.net (87.54.6.57) 20.459 ms 20.286 ms 20.271 ms
6 peer-as3257.alb2nqp8.dk.ip.tdc.net (195.215.109.102) 20.886 ms 20.963 ms 20.940 ms
7 ae13.cr0-lon1.ip4.gtt.net (89.149.139.162) 41.656 ms 41.632 ms 41.661 ms
8 77.67.124.46 (77.67.124.46) 41.663 ms 41.657 ms 41.678 ms
9 * * *
10 unassigned.psychz.net (172.107.243.250) 42.889 ms 42.885 ms 42.879 ms
11 193.149.187.210 (193.149.187.210) 42.375 ms 42.345 ms 42.767 ms