Native IP Check: Native vs Broadcast IP
“Native IP” and “broadcast IP” are informal market terms, not protocol classifications. They usually ask whether an address is registered in the same country where geolocation data says it is being used. That comparison can be useful, but it cannot prove a server’s physical location or predict whether another platform will trust the address.
IPBot exposes the comparison as classification.country_alignment instead of a binary is_native flag.
Check an IP
Section titled “Check an IP”Use the IP lookup tool, or request only the classification object:
curl -s "https://api.ipbot.com/v1/ip/8.8.8.8?fields=classification" | jq '.classification.country_alignment'The example is an anycast public resolver, so it is a useful reminder that not every globally routed address has one meaningful “actual country.”
The five alignment states
Section titled “The five alignment states”| Status | Plain-language label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
aligned | Native-leaning | The registered country and estimated observed country agree. |
mismatch | Broadcast-leaning | The registered country and estimated observed country differ. |
multi_region | Global / anycast service | The service is intentionally distributed, so a one-country comparison would mislead. |
unknown | Insufficient or conflicting data | Required evidence is absent, malformed, or contradictory. |
not_applicable | Special-use address | The address is private, reserved, documentation-only, or otherwise outside this comparison. |
The labels deliberately say “leaning.” An aligned result is evidence of consistency, not proof of physical presence. A mismatch is evidence of a registration-versus-observation difference, not evidence of abuse.
What gets compared
Section titled “What gets compared”IPBot keeps the inputs visible:
- Observed country comes from the active GeoIP estimate for the address.
- Allocation country comes from normalized registration evidence when that tier is available.
- Delegation country is the RIR delegation fallback.
- Operator geofeed country can corroborate the observation only when maintainers have verified that the operator publishes the selected feed. The current check is publisher-level, not an independent authorization proof for each prefix in that feed.
The registered side prefers allocation evidence and falls back to delegation evidence. basis and reason_codes explain which path was used. If registration sources conflict, or a publisher-reviewed geofeed conflicts with GeoIP, the result becomes unknown rather than guessing.
Confidence levels
Section titled “Confidence levels”| Confidence | Interpretation |
|---|---|
low | Evidence is incomplete or conflicting; do not make a hard decision from alignment alone. |
medium | Registration and GeoIP evidence support a comparison, but GeoIP remains an estimate. |
high | A publisher-reviewed RFC 8805 geofeed corroborates the observed country. A curated URL or HTTPS connection alone is not enough. |
RFC 8805 requires consumers to verify that a feed publisher is authoritative for the addresses being described. IPBot currently records and reviews evidence that the publisher operates the feed, ignores rows from unreviewed publishers for confidence elevation, and keeps provenance in the evidence path. It does not yet perform RFC 9092, RPKI, or RDAP scope checks for every prefix. A compromised reviewed publisher could therefore theoretically claim a third party’s prefix; per-prefix authorization is deferred to Phase 2.
What alignment does not tell you
Section titled “What alignment does not tell you”Country alignment does not establish:
- a device or person’s physical location;
- whether an IP is residential, mobile, a VPN, or a datacenter;
- whether an account, payment, subscription, or advertisement will be accepted;
- whether the IP has direct abuse evidence;
- whether an anycast service has a single operating country.
Read alignment alongside classification, evidence, and the decision scenarios. It is descriptive only: score_effect is always 0, so geofeed or registration agreement cannot silently change risk_score, verdict, or recommended_action.
Native IP check vs IP quality
Section titled “Native IP check vs IP quality”A native-IP check answers one narrow consistency question. IP quality is a broader judgment involving network type, anonymization, direct threat records, routing evidence, data freshness, and the loss tolerance of a particular workflow. Keeping those questions separate makes false certainty easier to spot.
For a product-level comparison of this approach with a consumer IP-quality tool, see IPBot vs Ping0. For the exact API fields, see the Response Schema.