[tor-talk] I don't understand two things about the node "freja".

[Michael Reed]

WHOIS data talks about the owners of the IP blocks, and while you can 
infer some information from that, what you cannot infer is the actual 
geographic location of devices actually living at those IP addresses 
(this is why GEOIP companies like Maxmind exist, to fill the gap of 
missing information).  So in this case, you are correct that RIPE says 
the 194.88.142.0 - 194.88.143.255 range is owned by ORG-HTPL1-RIPE which 
has a physical mailing address located in India, but that does not mean 
that the servers associated with that address block are actually 
physically located in India at all.  This happens all the time and is 
nothing remarkable.

Also, don't put too much credence in the reverse DNS entries associated 
with actual ISP routers - that information is commonly missing, 
outdated, or just flat out wrong.  Sure, some providers do a decent job 
populating useful tidbits in the reverse DNS, but many don't bother at all.

-Michael

On 6/30/20 6:13 PM, sean_sullivan at danwin1210.me wrote:
> I have questions about the Tor node “freja”.
>
> First, according to https://torstatus.rueckgr.at/, the node is at
> 194.88.143.66 which is in Italy. Yet WHOIS says the addresses
> 194.88.142.0-194.88.143.255 are in Pune, India. The last IP from a
> ‘traceroute’ is 81.25.202.165 and 81.25.202.128-81.25.202.255 is in ‘IT’
> (Italy) which suggests that https://torstatus.rueckgr.at/ is correct.
>
> Why would WHOIS inaccurately (I think) say the IP is in India?
>
> Second, according to https://torstatus.rueckgr.at/, “freja” is not an exit
> node. But if you use...
>
> StrictNodes 1
> ExitNodes freja
>
> ...then TBB will load the purple introductory screen “Explore. Privately.”
> (I tried with other non-exit nodes and TBB typically gets stuck on
> “Requesting Relay Information” and never loads the purple screen).
>
> However, then “freja” will not load any pages.
>
> So if it’s not an exit node, why does the introductory screen load?
>
> Thanks.
>