Since 2006, we’ve been building the world’s largest database tracking which parts of the internet run on renewable power – the Green Web Dataset. Hosting providers get verified with us to become included in the Dataset as a way to publicly show their commitment towards the mission of a fossil-free internet by 2030. The verification process is free, and open to all hosting providers regardless of the size of their organisation.
Part of the process for adding a new provider to the Green Web Dataset is for that provider to supply us with a set of IP ranges that they use. Whenever a website is checked using the Green Web Checker or Greencheck API, we try to match it with one of the IP ranges in the Dataset. We’ve written more about that in this FAQ How does the green web check work?
How we handle large providers
For the most part, hosting providers only manage a small number of IP ranges which they can easily maintain by themselves through our Provider Portal. However, there are some extremely large hosting providers in our Green Web Dataset as well, who have thousands of IP ranges which are regularly changing.
For these providers, we opted to write automate import scripts which fetch information about operating IP addresses that these providers already put into the public domain and update on a regular basis. This removes the need for any one individual to manually update this information given the volume of data we are dealing with for each provider.
Which providers currently have automated IP range updates?
The providers we currently run automated IP range updates for are:
- Amazon Web Services
- Google (including Google Cloud Platform)
- Microsoft Azure
The code for these importers can be found in our public GitHub repository.
How often are IP ranges automatically updated?
For the providers above, we run the automated import scripts weekly. This means that there’ll be a small window during which any changes these providers make to their IP ranges will not be reflected in our Dataset.
How do the automated importers work?
At a high level, the importers work by fetching data about known IP ranges from endpoints or data sources which each provider has made publicly available. When this data is retrieved, it is processed, and relevant IP ranges for each provider are extracted.
Once a list of IP ranges is available, the importer script first deactivates all the current IP ranges assigned to a given provider. It then adds all the newly fetched IP ranges to the provider listing as active IP addresses.
What if I think there is a mistake in the data?
If you believe that the information about a particular provider might have an error, please contact us via our Support Form.
I’m a verified provider and would like my IP ranges updated automatically.
We’re looking at ways to update our existing API to better support how organisations need to share updates and to enable other providers to update their IP ranges in a more automated manner.
If you are a large hosting provider that has verified with us and would like to create an import script to automatically update your IP ranges, please contact us via our Support Form.