Description

The IP Geolocation service provides information about the physical location of website visitors when you use Sitecore DMS or xDB.

In a situation when you suspect that the collected information is either incorrect or not up-to-date, use one of the following solutions.

There might be the following related symptoms:

• The location data is incorrect in the Analytics reports.
• This or similar errors appear in the log files: 

  ManagedPoolThread #4 2015:06:28 00:00:36 ERROR Error retrieving geo ip information for ip 000.000.000.000
  Exception: System.Net.WebException
  Message: The operation has timed out
  Source: System
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at Sitecore.CES.Client.WebClient.ExecuteRequest(String requestUri)
   at Sitecore.CES.Client.ResourceConnector`1.Request(String endpoint, Object[] parameters)
   at Sitecore.CES.GeoIp.SitecoreProvider.GetInformationByIp(String ip)‌

Solution 1

Ensure that the module has been properly installed and configured:

• Check that you purchased the related service on the Sitecore Support and Self-Service Portal (Set up Sitecore IP Geolocation).
  Note that the App Center was used before the launch of the Portal (Sign up and Invoicing: IP Geolocation Service, page 18) as it has been discontinued.
• Check that all configuration files in the \App_Config\Include\CES folder are enabled.
• Open the http://hostname/sitecore/admin/showconfig.aspx page and verify that the following configuration is present:
  
  For Sitecore CMS 6.4–7.2:

  <lookupmanager defaultprovider="default" patch:source="Sitecore.Analytics.config">
    <providers>
     <clear/>
     <add name="default" type="Sitecore.CES.GeoIp.SitecoreProvider, Sitecore.CES.GeoIp">
       <param ref="GeoIpConnector" patch:source="Sitecore.CES.GeoIp.config" />
       <param ref="EndpointSource" patch:source="Sitecore.CES.GeoIp.config" />
     </add>    
    </providers>
  </lookupmanager>

  
  

  For Sitecore XP 7.5 and later:

  <lookupmanager defaultprovider="default" patch:source="Sitecore.Analytics.config">
    <providers>
     <clear/>
     <add name="default" type="Sitecore.CES.GeoIp.SitecoreProvider, Sitecore.CES.GeoIp">
       <param ref="GeoIpConnector" patch:source="Sitecore.CES.GeoIp.config" />
     </add>    
    </providers>
  </lookupmanager>

Solution 2

Check that the firewall rules are configured correctly. For the Geo IP service, the HTTPS protocol is used for the following URLs:

• geoIp-ces.cloud.sitecore.net
• discovery-ces.cloud.sitecore.net

If it is not possible to configure rules based on the URL, you must provide access to the following list of IPs:
Azure Datacenter IP Address Ranges.
Note: Sitecore cannot provide a more specific range of addresses. The mentioned URLs have dynamic IP addresses, and Sitecore has no control over when and how they change. Therefore, the whole range of IP addresses must be whitelisted, if it is not possible to whitelist hostnames.

Solution 3

Send a direct request to the service using your environment and license to check the service availability:

1. Depending on your Sitecore XP version:
   • For Sitecore XP 8.1–9.3, save the TestIp.aspx file into the \sitecore folder.
   • For Sitecore XP 10.0 and later, save the TestIp.aspx file into the \sitecore folder.
2. Open the http://hostname/sitecore/TestIp.aspx page.
3. Enter any known IP address (for example, 193.200.33.51) into the text box and click GetInformationByIp.

If the information about the IP address is displayed on the page, the service is accessible.

Important: Do not use the code of this page to get information about IP addresses. This code always requests information directly from the service, which might lead to excessive charges for service usage.

Solution 4

When IP information is requested, the following steps are performed:

• The lookup of IP information in the memory cache.
• The lookup of IP information in the database.
• The request to the Geolocation service.

Therefore, always check whether the correct IP information is stored in the Analytics database:

• For Sitecore XP 9.0 and later: the IpInfo facet in the InteractionFacets table, the Shards databases.
• For Sitecore XP 7.5–8.2.7: the GeoIps collection, the Collection database (MongoDB).
• For Sitecore CMS 6.4–7.2: the GeoIps table, the Analytics database (SQL).