Is there a reason all these IPs track to the same place?

Captain Ultra

Alright so I help run a small roleplaying forum, and a few months ago, we found that there were several accounts that supposedly belonged to different players that all traced back to the same place, Chattanooga, Tennessee, from the same one or two IP addresses. Considering the similarity of writing styles, along with some timeline evidence, and other evidence we reasonably concluded that this was a single player trying to get around some of our rules on having multiple characters.

Since then, I've done IP checks on every new player, (through one of those "Find IP addresses" sites) and everyone's come through fine. Yesterday, a new player joined, and their IP traced to Chattanooga again (though it was not the same IP address that the previous Chattanooga player came from). The player claims to be in Maine. When we confronted one of the accounts a few months ago, they claimed that they had to use a proxy service because of campus restrictions, and so the reason that they traced to Chattanooga was the proxy.

Now am I being paranoid? Is there a reason that seemingly half the board, despite claiming to be from different parts of the country all trace to Chattanooga? I honestly don't know enough about IP addresses to know.

Ruckus

It's a logical explanation, if the IP is actually a proxy service, because multiple users at different locations could have similar restrictions on their network, and thus the users could be circumventing those restrictions by using the same Proxy service by coincidence. The only way to know for sure would be to get the name of the proxy service from one of the users and check it out for yourself.

mspencer

I don't know what service you're using to trace IP's, but one of the most reliable ways I can think of is to see who owns the IP block.

https://www.arin.net

At the very top right is a box that says "search WHOIS." Type the IP there and search.

You may get back a detail page for the IP in question, like if you search for my ISP's DNS server, 204.26.64.1.

You may get a group of single-line entries back. Click the one with the most restrictive IP range, which probably describes who owns that IP. The larger ranges probably describe the hosting provider or ISP that serves the smaller range.

You may get a different registrar. If the results point to RIPE or APNIC or AFRINIC then go search one of those registrars for Europe, Asia/Pacific, or Africa respectively.