IP address says I’m in Sweden but I’m in the U.K.!

[Lexxie12]

I haven't been out of the country but my IP address has suddenly started saying I'm in Sweden instead of the U.K. and now every Safari window I open on every device in the house seems to think we're in Sweden and reverts to Swedish! I thought it was a Google issue but when I switch my phone over to 5G, it sees that I'm in the U.K. and stops coming up in Swedish.

I have checked that my Google account was set to English on several occasions and tried to change IP location, but it won't allow me to do so, but it is now happening on all phones and devices connected to our home internet.

is this an issue with Sky? How can I fix this please?

Thanks.

[Chrisee]

@Lexxie12 Sweden is a new one we have seen Sky customers being located in Italy a few times in the past. The issue is down to the shortage of IP4 addresses as the world's supply is exhausted. Large ISPs buy unused blocks if addresses so their customers can connect. When the blocks get transferred between markets it takes a while for the various location services to update.

You can force an IP address change either by powering down your Sky hub for an hour or by forcing a disconnection in the web interface of a black Sky hub. Hopefully you get a new address which is UK born and bred.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Chrisee wrote:

Hopefully you get a new address which is UK born and bred.

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Strictly speaking, all IP addresses started off as American and subsequently migrated.

https://www.colocationamerica.com/blog/history-of-ip-address-part-3-rirs 

Brits might legitimately claim to have originated the World Wide Web (thanks, fellow Tim ; ) but not TCP/IP.

[Lexxie12]

Thankyou so much. That seems to have done the trick!

How does your IP address change though (to a foreign one), if you haven't switched your router off in a long time? Surely, I would have had the same IP address for as long as the router has been switched on continuously? It just seemed to come out of the blue...

Thanks  anyway for the advice. I will remember this for the future, as I suspect this may become more common if the world has run out of IP4 addresses! It makes total sense but at least I'm not having to learn Swedish now to navigate Google...

[Lexxie12]

After thinking it was sorted, my daughter has gone on the internet and we are back to Swedish again! What can be causing this problem please? Is the laptop 'remembering' that we were in Sweden and continuing to link to everything in Swedish (even although we weren't in Sweden!) or is there something more sinister going on?

Thanks.

[jamesn123]

@Lexxie12 

Sometimes overnight your hub will reboot or disconnect from the line due to maintenance and that can cause a new IP lease to take place.

[Lexxie12]

@jamesn123 

Thanks. Any ideas why it has reverted back to Swedish again on the laptop (but not my phone)?

Thanks.

[TimmyBGood]

@Lexxie12 

Phones are far more complicated because they are typically continuously geolocating by cell triangulation and/or GPS.

[Troy123]

Also my ipv4 address never seem to change