How do i find location of an isp?

thataccsetuper

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Oct 5, 2017
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I have seen other people talking about isp locations, for example, the speed of your internet depends on your isp location. I have looked online to see how to locate isp's but it mainly shows where the offices of them are. I am not sure how to find the isp location of where a network is connecting to. I am on Shaw right now, I know which city it's in but I am not sure if it could be an office or the place I am connecting to.
 
Solution


It does not really matter.
Your "ISP" has no real location.
Yes, corporate offices. But the first hop outside of your house is somewhere semi-local. ANd then someewhere a little farther away. And then again, and again.
Until you finally connect to whatever 'server' you are trying to access.

You cannot influence the pathway...
It is so much more complex that you think.

A ISP is just a business and they buy each other all the time. The office is just where the executives sit, in some cases they may lease connection from a different ISP for their own buildings. The traffic does not actually flow through the ISP offices.

What is most important is how the ISP are connected together. There are large buildings in most major cities that all the big ISP put routers in. They connect there routers to each other. The larger ISP have many hundreds of the these interconnections locations. Smaller ISP will only have connections maybe 2 larger ISP.

There is really no way to get actual information on this interconnection and where it is done. This is kinda secret stuff that lets some ISP perform better than others. To explain to someone with no networking back ground how the internet really works is not simple. You could play with tracert and then look the IP addresses up in ARIN or one of the other ip registries. If you get really curious you can use what are called looking glass sites that some ISP have and actually look at the BGP routing and peering.

Still it makes little difference. You likely have no options other than to connect to whatever connection point your ISP offers at your house. Many people are lucky to even get 1 ISP who offers service.

This would be more a concern for a large corporation that buys their own fiber connects to the these internet hubs in large cities.
 

thataccsetuper

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Oct 5, 2017
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That's what I'm trying to say, offices aren't where you connect to so it isn't the "isp location". I'm trying to find out where an isp is when someone says mentions the location of it. I'm not even sure about the meaning of that now and how to find that it by what they're saying. And you mentioned about connection points from an isp to a house, how do I find where they are?
 

thataccsetuper

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Oct 5, 2017
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Change? Change what? I've never mentioned anything about changing something. I'm trying to find WHERE the router my isp is connecting me to. I've never said anything about changing something...
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


It does not really matter.
Your "ISP" has no real location.
Yes, corporate offices. But the first hop outside of your house is somewhere semi-local. ANd then someewhere a little farther away. And then again, and again.
Until you finally connect to whatever 'server' you are trying to access.

You cannot influence the pathway your data takes from here to there.


If you see someone talking about their "isp location", you can ignore them, because they have no idea what they're talking about.
 
Solution

thataccsetuper

Honorable
Oct 5, 2017
33
1
10,545


Thanks, but how can I found those semi-local servers that the first hop gets to?