So IP addresses are like phone numbers. The problem is that there is a finite amount of them, and we don't have Area Codes fully implemented yet (IPV6 is Phone numbers with Area Codes).
So ISP's lease IP Address ranges for a few months to a year. In order to better manage how many IP's the ISP's need, they have all modems set to release/ renew their connection on a one month basis
(This is an approximation, some do it more frequently, some do it less. If you are a business, then it typically doens't change at all, depending on your contract, and what sort of Net presence you need)
http://www.nro.net/statistics- this site keeps stats on when ip ranges move/ shuffle around. Typically this is due to ISP companies going out of business. Most ISP's are loathe to relinquish addresses once they have them.
So lets do an example here
This is my IP address right now: 198.167.32.134
Around Thanksgiving of this year, when my IP address did the release/ renew thing. It started showing that I was located in Canada. Pandora, Spotify, and Netflix all started acting weird on me as those services are different up there in the frozen north.
I did some digging and there was an ISP up there that went out of business. My provider bought it and the DNS info for that IP address never updated fully, to show it was now down here in the states. It took about 2 weeks for the problem to resolve itself.
DNS History shows this:
IP Location Results for 198.167.32.134
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City: Summerside
Zip Code:
Region Code: PE
Region Name: Prince Edward Island
Country Code: CA
Country Name: Canada
Latitude: 46.4
Longitude: -63.7833
GMT Offset:
DST Offset:
Website with cool tools:
http://viewdns.info/
Once everyone got the right DNS information for that IP address, then it got fixed. (For the record, this is why I tell people to use the 8.8.8.8/ 8.8.4.4 DNS addresses. Google is much better at updating their logs)
I hope this makes sense. I need to get back to SQL for now though, and might expand upon this further later