IMC 2026 NewGeo: New Directions in IP Geolocation Workshop

IP geolocation—the practice of mapping virtual IP addresses to physical locations—underpins a wide range of Internet services and operations, from content delivery and targeted advertising to regulatory compliance, fraud detection, policy enforcement, and law enforcement. Despite its pervasive use, the reliability, accuracy, and transparency of IP geolocation techniques, databases, and policies, remain only partially understood. Several converging trends make this workshop both timely and necessary. First, the December 2025 IAB Workshop on IP Address Geolocation surfaced fundamental open questions about geolocation accuracy and integrity, the limitations of self-publishing location mechanisms such as geofeeds (RFC 8805), and architectural tensions between passive location inference and evolving privacy expectations. The IAB workshop's report explicitly recommends further research and community engagement. NewGeo is positioned as a natural academic follow-up, providing a venue for rigorous, measurement-driven contributions that can advance the directions identified by the IAB workshop. Second, the Internet's architecture is changing in ways that demand new approaches to IP-based geolocation. The growing adoption of IPv6, the proliferation of VPNs, relay services, and onion routing, the increasing use of CGNAT by mobile and fixed-line operators, the rise of satellite-based Internet access, and future deep space IP environments all challenge current geolocation assumptions. At the same time, regulatory frameworks such as the EU's GDPR and the Digital Services Act increasingly require accurate location determination for compliance, creating tension between technical limitations and legal expectations. Third, there is no dedicated academic venue for presenting measurement work on IP geolocation. Relevant papers appear sporadically across IMC, CoNEXT, PAM, TMA, SIGCOMM, and security conferences, but the community lacks a focused forum to consolidate findings, compare methodologies, benchmark datasets, and build shared infrastructure. NewGeo fills this gap by bringing together researchers, network operators, geolocation data providers, and policymakers in a structured workshop co-located with IMC.

Workshop Chairs & Primary Contact Information:

More details and agenda coming soon!