If you live in Sharjah, Al Ain or Ras Al Khaimah and a website greets you as a visitor from Dubai, nothing is broken. IP geolocation does not measure where you are. It estimates where an address block is used — and in the UAE, most blocks are used from a few central sites.
Where UAE addresses are placed
We keep our own copy of the DB-IP Lite location database and add up the IPv4 addresses it places in each emirate. In the build of October 2026:
| Emirate | Share of IPv4 addresses placed in the UAE |
|---|---|
| Dubai | about 61 % |
| Abu Dhabi | about 30 % |
| Sharjah | about 4 % |
| Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Umm Al Quwain | under 2 % each |
These shares describe equipment, not people. The two national operators terminate a large part of their customers’ connections in central sites, and almost all of the country’s data centres are in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The UAE page recomputes the table every time our datasets are rebuilt.
Three answers to “where is this address?”
A lookup on this site shows three facts that are easy to confuse:
- Registration. The regional internet registry for the Middle East and Europe, the RIPE NCC, records which organisation holds a block and the country it is registered in. A UAE company’s block is registered in the UAE even if it is used in a data centre abroad.
- Routing. The global BGP table shows which network (AS number) announces the block today — for example Etisalat (AS5384) or du (AS15802).
- Geolocation. A database estimates where the block is used. It is usually right about the country and often only approximately right about the emirate.
None of the three says where you are. That is known only to you and — for its own subscribers — your provider.
Why it is sometimes wrong
- Central gateways. Mobile data and many home connections leave the provider’s network at a few central points.
- VPNs, proxies and corporate networks show the location of their exit, which may be in another emirate or another country.
- Satellite and roaming connections can exit far from the user.
- Reassigned blocks keep old location data until the databases are updated.
What an IP address can’t reveal
An IP address does not reveal your name, your street address or your exact position, and our tools never claim to. A website can see your provider and an approximate area. Linking an address to a subscriber requires the provider’s records, which are released only through legal process.
Getting a location corrected
If an address you are responsible for is consistently placed in the wrong emirate or country, report it to the geolocation provider — DB-IP accepts corrections, as do the other databases — or, if you operate the network, publish a geofeed (RFC 8805) so every provider picks up the right location. Check the result with the IP location tool.