Created GCE in europe region but IP address shows its in US

Question

I have created an instance based in London region

Due to strict guidelines from client we have to make sure there should be no trace where it shows that the app is hosted outside EU.

Not even here:

We are using google services from a long if we dont get a solution then we will have no other choice left except to move to AWS.

Because in AWS we have a RDS instance which is based in London region and when we are doing the ip address lookup its showing the expected result.

> Is there any way we can make it to point to only Europe region and not any other region including US.

We already have our application deployed into GAE instance but since it does not offer any changes into the ip address. I tried to look for a solution into the GCE but this also does not solve our issue.

Thank you.

Updating the OP

Just for the records. We posted an issue on the support portal and even bought gold support package to get it resolved. But it turned out that it cant be achieved. They cant help out in getting the trace-route to show the actual region for static ip where the respective instance is located. And we ended up > migrating to Azure platform from GCP.

I will keep it open, may be GCP will come up with a solution in future for this issue.

Answer 1

I am not sure is this not possible solution? if in that case how other cloud vendor able to do so.

I have taken two box in linode one in Singapore and other one from UK they both able to show the region perfectly well.

Note :- I have updated the latest database from MaxMind of Country IP

geoiplookup 1xx.xx6.2x.xx0

GeoIP Country Edition: GB, United Kingdom

Another Machine.

geoiplookup 1xx.xx2.x5.1xx

GeoIP Country Edition: SG, Singapore

But all the machine I took in GCP are pointing to US which is not good. In some point if this is going to be a big issue in our PCI and Customer questionable we need to look for another cloud vendor :(

Answer 2

All the IP addresses Google provides to GCP user are registered with ARIN under the Google HQ in Mountain View, California (in other words SWIP to be Mountain View, CA). So, all geolocations lookup of the IP addresses will resolve to the United States even though the actual server is located somewhere else. In addition to that, in GCP, it's not uncommon to remap a block of IPs from one location to another, especially given the elasticity of IP addresses for the GCP and they way they are recycled or reused.

However, depending on which tool or website you are are using to get geolocation information the information may vary just because of the fact that they might be using a different database, which may not be updated or doesn’t have the right information regarding the geolocation of the IP.

You could you this website/ tool from ARIN (SEARCH WhoisRWS) to get a more accurate answer as, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Canada, the United States, and many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands. Which is more will provide more reliable information.

Possible workarounds, you could set up a reverse proxy on a machine that has a Geo local IP address for EU and forwards requests from there to your Google Cloud Platform (GCP) VM instance. For example, spin up nginx in CloudSigma and point the DNS at that.