MaxMind reviews - Blocking an entire country?

I would like to block an entire country from visiting/accessing one of my websites.

I was searching for the best solution to do it and I noticed that most of recommended solutions is using MaxMind GeoIP Country.

My questions are :

A) Have you ever used "MaxMind GeoIP Country" ? and If so, What do you think about it?
B) Do you have better solutions to block an entire country without having any side effects on my other visitors?


Thanks in advance

 

I have used it and I found it to be quite well made and fairly accurate. The company I used work for also started using it to serve different content to visitors from different countries.

You can download a .dat file and some example PHP scripts from MaxMind's website or you can download a .csv file and some instructions on how to load it into MySQL. I found the MySQL option be slightly faster on the lookups.

As for accuracy, I was able to test some IP addresses that are owned by AOL/Time/Warner but are located in London and also one that was in Germany and it returned that they were both located in America. However, I asked them to check the same IP addresses with the paid version of the database before we bought it rather than the free version and it located them correctly. The free version got everything else I tested correct.

I can't think of any better way to block a country. MaxMind are continuously updating the database so you should periodically update your copy from their website. The paid version was something like £10/month so it shouldn't break the budget and the free version is, well, free.

Don't forget to let your visitors know why they have been blocked and how to contact you about it if you have got it wrong. You wouldn't want to find out that there actually was a mistake in the database and that you had been blocking visitors from your own country.

 

Maxmind data is pretty accurate and I have used it before as well for even tracking city and it does a good job

 

Block the entire country range in iptables, if you are using a linux server.
Other wise you will have to use some third party firewall to block the access from outside.

 

A) Yes, it's quite accurate. Didn't use it for blocking, though (just incase you were wondering )
B) No. If you want easy of use, perhaps www.blockacountry.com

Jay

 

Maxmind is around 95%+ accuracy, so you can completely trust on them, since there is basically no better/alternative solution.
But my 2c, instead of just wasting the traffic, redirect it to some sponsors and earn money, instead of killing it, for example you can use our ad network ( TrafficBroker.com) , and you can send the traffic there and earn money.

 

I am using cloudflare for blocking the countries and IP ranges. It works faily good. In addition to that, it's CDN technology loads statics content very fast.

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/e...ck-connections-based-on-country-or-countries-

 

You will not beat Cloudflare's CDN. Those guys have built a fantastic network.

 

Yes, Maxmind is a good tool to block entire country, you can also add a php code on your site to block a particular country from viewing your website.