I can confirm re city seeing same behaviour on commercial DB-IP. There is basically now known unknown.

We're also seeing a bit less Unknown regions though but we only made the change a couple weeks ago so maybe too early to tell.

On the free DB I can confirm same behaviour. Regions are basically all unknown. Which makes me think this is not an issue in Matomo but related to the free database not including regions possibly.

fyi @mattab

@tsteur,
Let me check if I understand what you say:
Can you confirm that, using commercial DB-IP, the behaviour on regions is the same that the one I described using free DB-IP?

I would need to double-check this because I'm willing to pay an anual subscription to DB-IP but only if the regions are woriking fine.

Thanks for you support.

So far I'm seeing quite a lot of regions using the commercial-DB, but on another Matomo using the free DB I get basically no region.

Ideally, if possible, ping me again in a week just so I can double confirm. This is the graph for the Unknown regions and we configured it like 1-2 weeks ago

It went quite a bit down since then. Don't know if they have a refund policy but if they do would maybe give it a try for sure.

Guess my assumption was correct. According to their list the lite databases do not return ISO codes for regions. See https://db-ip.com/db/download/ip-to-city-lite compared to https://db-ip.com/db/ip-to-location

That actually means regions won't work with the lite database atm.
Might be possible to try to determine the iso code based on the name. Will have a look and create a PR if easily doable.

@mattab maybe we could ask db-ip if they would be willing to include the region iso code in their free db as well 🤔

@sgiehl, @tsteur ,
In the mean time, I'm going to purchase a subscription to db-ip

Thank you very much for your support!

FYI: After manually installing the paid version of db-ip database, regions seem to start working again.
Also, just for reference: in order to it to work, I have had to rename dbip-location-2020-02.mmdb (the file dbip provides once you fulfill payment) to DBIP-City.mmdb (the file Matomo expects)

Moreover, it seems that autoupdater will not work with this paid version: DB-IP provides a specific URL where you can get a JSON that describes the details of the latest available geodb. Among these details is the particular URL to get the database.
Have Matomo team any plans to provide an autoupdater for the paid version of DB-IP database? (It would be nice)

Have Matomo team any plans to provide an autoupdater for the paid version of DB-IP database?

see #15580

👍

WARNING - WARNING - WARNING
After paying the subscription to db-ip geolocation database which seemed to work better for Regions than the free one, I noticed that it was not accurate at all for cities, at least, my country (Spain)

It uses as city location the one for the ASN owner of the IP and, then, almost all hits are located at a few cities (the ones where ASN headquarters are located)

Lamentably, db-ip refund policy doesn't apply because I've already downloaded the database, which is normal.
However... How could have I tested the database without having download it previously?

I would like this comment could help some other people to avoid wasting 250$ for something useless.

P.S.- Obviously, I'm back to my old and well-known GeoLite2-City.mmdb which is working as a charm (as it used to do.)

Seems that's correct. For my IP the location of maxmind is also far more accurate than the one of db-ip 🤔

Sure: My observations shown something like if, suddenly, almost all visitor in a (not too small) country migrated to a few big cities!!!

fyi @mattab

Tricky to know what to do. For now maybe we don't do anything and just leave this opened until we come to a decision or suggestions on what to do later.

@mattab ,
Tricky indeed... I agree with your decision. However I would suggest to remove the recommendation in favor of db-ip's databases as someone naive (like me) could end up buying a useless 250$ subscription. it is not so much but... it hurts a little bit :)

@mattab I guess this depends more on the particular's of maxmind's license, if we recommend maxmind then we have to be explicit about what information users have to give to maxmind and what upkeep they have to do (eg, what happens when maxmind removes an IP from the database, is simply updating every week enough? do we force setting up the autoupdater? etc.).

@mattab @tsteur any plans how to proceed with the dbip region and city issue?

With #15592 at least the region detection should be improved for free databases, even if it might not work in all cases. Note: This can't be completely fixed unless DBIP includes the region iso code in their free databases.

The inaccurate city detection still remains. Check my current IP on db-ip now a few days. The reported location switched around, but was always very inaccurate, while the one from Maxmind was a lot better...

@sgiehl the goal was to offer both in the geolocation admin. DBIP and MaxMind. We can mention MaxMind reports more accurate city/region, but it requires the to obtain a license key which they can get by signing up. We could link to some FAQ.

I think it's mostly about doing some explaining in the UI, might not need too much explaining but a little bit and explain the rest in the FAQ.

The difficult part for users once they have a license key is to generate the URL from this license key and getting this right. In Matomo for WordPress I basically only ask users to enter a MaxMind license key and generate the URL server side but there it's all a bit more minimalistic and I don't let users choose which kind of DB. So would just need to make sure to explain how to generate the URL they want once they have the license key.

I think it's mostly about doing some explaining in the UI

👍 exactly, making the UI clear and transparent with pros/cons of each, would be the best outcome.