Ask HN: Geolocation - Google & Linode
As I was doing a google search, I noticed that Google knew that I was in Portland, OR. That's not that surprising, of course, until it hit me that I was surfing through ssh, and the IP address that Google saw should have been in Dallas, TX, where my Linode server is. How did Google know I was in Portland? I don't have the google toobar (hmmm, I am using Chrome, perhaps it's built in?)
So, that's the first strange thing. The second, which is much less mysterious, but still worth mentioning, is that, as I was confirming that other websites saw my linode ip address and not my actual one, I noted that they all thought I was in Absecon, New Jersey, rather than Dallas. It occurs to me that I have no way to know if Linode actually put my server in Dallas or at one of it's other data centers, even though they tell me it's Dallas, I have no way to check. I thought about ping times to various Dallas and New Jersey businesses, but that doesn't help, since who knows where they are actually hosted. How does one find out where a server they are logged into is actually located?