Issue with Geolocation for Internal IPs in Self-Hosted Plausible Analytics

[joaoaxerb]

Hi everyone,

I'm encountering an issue with my self-hosted instance of Plausible Analytics. I've deployed Plausible within an internal network, and I'm monitoring applications that are also on my company's internal network. These applications are only accessible via VPN.

The problem arises when users connect through the VPN. They are assigned internal IP addresses, which Plausible Analytics cannot geolocate since these IPs are internal to our network. This results in a lack of geolocation data for our analytics.

I know I can get the information on the internal IP ranges and figure out the location of each of them. Is it possible to use a custom IP range location database that Plausible can consume? This way, we could map internal IP addresses to their respective locations within our network.

Has anyone else faced a similar issue or found a workaround for geolocating internal IP addresses? Any suggestions or solutions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

[ruslandoga]

👋 @joaoaxerb

Yes, it is possible to use a custom MMDB file. Please see https://github.com/plausible/community-edition/wiki/Configuration#ip_geolocation_db

[ruslandoga]

Hi! Sorry for the delay on this, I got a bit sick. I'll look into this again once I get better.

[joaoaxerb]

@ruslandoga no problems my friend, wishing you a speedy recovery.

[ruslandoga]

👋 @joaoaxerb

I tried using your database in my self-hosted instance (Plausible CE v2.1.5) and I was able to reproduce the problem. I noticed that the current release of Plausible uses locus-2.3.6 and above I used the latest locus-2.3.11. So, I tried to find where the problem had been fixed and it seems like locus-2.3.7 cannot find "10.72.29.123" and locus-2.3.8 can. There is a note in the changelog for v2.3.8 about some fix so I guess that was what made it work: https://github.com/g-andrade/locus/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#238---2024-05-04

I'm going to open a PR that updates locus to the latest version in Plausible CE and make another release once it's merged.

PR: #5104

---

In the meantime you can try using ghcr.io/ruslandoga/plausible:my-build-update-locus built from ruslandoga#375.

iex> Plausible.Geo.lookup("10.72.29.123")
%{
  "city" => "Belo Horizonte",
  "country" => "BR",
  "network" => "10.72.29.0-10.72.29.255",
  "region" => "Minas Gerais"
}

[joaoaxerb]

Hello @ruslandoga!

I pulled the docker image with your updates.

I was able to lookup the IP address via docker exec:

iex(plausible@9fa7d1d23385)2> Plausible.Geo.lookup("xx.xx.xx.xxx")
%{
  "city" => "Belo Horizonte",
  "country" => "BR",
  "network" => "xx.xx.xx.0-10.72.29.255",
  "region" => "Minas Gerais"
}

However I noticed some new errors:

First, my app won't reconize there is an active visitor on the monitored app:

Also, even though locus was able to find the locations, the map remains empty:

Docker logs returned:

Server: 127.0.0.1:8000 (http)
Request: POST /api/event
** (exit) an exception was raised:
    ** (FunctionClauseError) no function clause matching in Access.get/3
        (elixir 1.17.1) lib/access.ex:320: Access.get("BR", "iso_code", nil)
        (plausible 0.0.1) lib/plausible/ingestion/geolocation.ex:9: Plausible.Ingestion.Geolocation.lookup/1
        (plausible 0.0.1) lib/plausible/ingestion/event.ex:283: Plausible.Ingestion.Event.put_geolocation/2
        (plausible 0.0.1) lib/plausible/ingestion/event.ex:144: Plausible.Ingestion.Event.execute_step/3
        (plausible 0.0.1) lib/plausible/telemetry/plausible_metrics.ex:140: Plausible.PromEx.Plugins.PlausibleMetrics.time_it/1
        (plausible 0.0.1) lib/plausible/telemetry/plausible_metrics.ex:133: Plausible.PromEx.Plugins.PlausibleMetrics.measure_duration/3
        (elixir 1.17.1) lib/enum.ex:4858: Enumerable.List.reduce/3
        (elixir 1.17.1) lib/enum.ex:2585: Enum.reduce_while/3
16:55:16.539 [error] #PID<0.4664.0> running PlausibleWeb.Endpoint (connection #PID<0.4663.0>, stream id 1) terminated

Once again, appreciate your support, and let me know how I can be helpful to resolve these issues.

[ruslandoga]

Ah, right. Plausible assumes a certain structure of the lookup results, like the availability of country iso codes and city geoname ids. I guess the custom MMDBs would need to follow that structure.

analytics/lib/plausible/ingestion/geolocation.ex

Lines 5 to 20 in 7dd5664

	case Plausible.Geo.lookup(ip_address) do
	%{} = entry ->
	country_code =
	entry
	|> get_in(["country", "iso_code"])
	|> ignore_unknown_country()
	city_geoname_id = country_code && get_in(entry, ["city", "geoname_id"])
	city_geoname_id = Plausible.Ingestion.CityOverrides.get(city_geoname_id, city_geoname_id)
	%{
	country_code: country_code,
	subdivision1_code: subdivision1_code(country_code, entry),
	subdivision2_code: subdivision2_code(country_code, entry),
	city_geoname_id: city_geoname_id
	}

This hypothetical lookup result would have probably worked:

iex> Plausible.Geo.lookup("10.72.29.123")
%{
  "city" => %{"geoname_id" => 3470127}, # "Belo Horizonte"
  "country" => %{"iso_code" => "BR"},
  "subdivisions" => [%{"geoname_id" => 3457153}] # "Minas Gerais"
}

Is there a way to make mmdbctl write metadata in this way?