This is an original planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, an official standard, or legal advice. Example addresses use documentation ranges. Review every command before you paste it.
What this hour is for
Geolocation maps an address to a region using data that is often wrong for mobile networks, VPNs, and anycast. A city on a screen is not a person's location and not evidence.
Look up an address you operate or an address a ticket already contains. A bulk list is a list you were given for a reason you can say, not a scrape. The tools do not grant a right to collect addresses.
Write the result as a hint with the date. Do not file it as a fact about a human. Do not use it to decide that a login is an attack by itself.
If the hint matters, the next step is your own logs for a service you run, not a deeper search for a person.
The change you can finish
Apply nothing during the writing of the note. When the lab window opens, it is one change on the device named in the ticket. Read the draft, then the device, then decide.
Rollback is the file or the revision you saved first. You do not invent a rollback after the only copy is gone.
- Name the address and why you may hold it.
- Look it up once.
- Write the hint and the date.
- Label it as a hint.
- Do not attach it to a person.
- Stop.
Mistakes that outlive the command
How IP Geolocation Works and How Accurate It Is goes wrong in a small set of ways. The list is here so the ticket can forbid them before the window.
- A bulk list you scraped.
- A city treated as a home address.
- A decision about a human from the map alone.
- Repeated lookups of addresses you have no reason to hold.
Decisions to write down
One decision for How IP Geolocation Works and How Accurate It Is: The address is one you may hold. The result is labeled a hint. No person is identified from it. And one lookup is enough.
Checks before you call it done
Confirm this before you call the change done: The reason is in the ticket. The hint includes the date. No person was named from the map. And no follow-on search for a human was started. If one of those fails, stop.
A geolocation hit is a hint.
It is not a person's location.Before you leave the device
How IP Geolocation Works and How Accurate It Is ends when the hostname on the device matches the hostname in the ticket. If it does not, you are on the wrong box. Stop. A command that succeeded on the wrong box is not progress.
The draft stays a draft until a person has read the names in it. A generator does not log into the device and does not know which interface is the uplink. You delete a line that names a device, a zone, or a prefix you did not write down.
0.0.0.0/0 is not kept because a sample included it. A source you can say is the source you keep. 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, 203.0.113.0/24, and 2001:db8::/32 are documentation. They belong in the note. They are not prefixes you type onto a production device because they appeared in a draft.
prompt-for-this is a reminder that a secret is missing. It is not a password, a key, a community string, or a pre-shared key you save in the ticket or in git. The real secret stays in the store.
One change is the window. A VLAN and a routing protocol and a VPN do not share it. If two things move and the result is wrong, you will not know which one did it. The next feature waits for its own page.
If the same step fails twice, stop for the day. The failure is the result. Adding a forum command beside a half-applied config produces a device nobody can rebuild. Restore the copy you took first.
A second person reads the device name and the change aloud. If they cannot find them in the ticket, the note is not done. Silence is not agreement. Then leave the device alone.
This page is a planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, not an official standard, and not a permission to touch a network you do not administer. The pillar guide owns the wider design. This page owns one lab proof.
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