List of UK ISP Hostnames?

Does anybody know where I could find a list of ISP hostnames for UK ISP's?

I'm developing a site that I only want UK users to see, everyone else will see the generic world site. To do this I am blocking all hostnames but allowing access to UK hostnames, just trying to find a list of them is proving impossible.

Does anybody know if such a thing exists?

You don't need hostnames but the reverse DNS names for all UK ISP IP blocks which will block some UK people since their ISP has blocks registered overseas

Is there a list of those available anywhere do you know?

I'm aware of the problem with some ISP's having IP addresses registered abroad, one such is AOL, who use aol.com as hostnames or RDNS for all their IP's both in the UK and abroad, which is a bit of a pain, but with TalkTalk buying AOL, hopefully the UK AOL customers will be given new hostnames (as I can't seem to stop calling them).

The only alternative is to have a HUGE htaccess file containing all the IP's assigned to the UK by RIPE, which would slow the pages by quite some margin as every request would first be checked against the huge list.

There are also some further issues with it when ISP's have not set-up RDNS for all their IP's as those will also be blocked.

At the moment I have:-

Order deny,allow
Allow from btcentralplus.com
Allow from pipex.com
Allow from ntl.com
Allow from ac.uk
Allow from co.uk
Allow from net.uk
Allow from org.uk
Allow from ltd.uk
Allow from plc.uk
Deny from all

Obviously I have my own in that too. So the UK hostnames (RDNS) should all have access, ISP's such as blueyonder.co.uk, but the ones using .com or .net are going to have to be added individually, I just can't seem to find a list anywhere.

The list changes all the time, and we require providers to contact us so we can match IP address to service provider for our speedtester.

Is a free list available, I doubt it.

BTW .co.uk does not guarantee a UK based connection.

Ah okay.

Thanks Andrew, I think I shall have to look for another way of doing it then, perhaps with some kind of registration script which only accepts those living in the UK or something similar.

Appreciate the advice

Something like GeoIP is, I believe, the usual solution for stuff like this. I've not used it myself, but it seems there's some kind of free version available.

In reply to:

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Does anybody know where I could find a list of ISP hostnames for UK ISP's?

I'm developing a site that I only want UK users to see, everyone else will see the generic world site. To do this I am blocking all hostnames but allowing access to UK hostnames,

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When I see this sort of proposal, I generally think it is a Bad Idea. Firstly, IP address space is fragmented, and as it becomes more heavily utilised, it will become more heavily fragmented, so actually setting rules to achieve the kind of split you require becomes more and more difficult.

To a large extent, it depends on why you want to control what your users want to see. If it is a matter of security or legal duties eg copyright, and you have to get it right, it is probably better to find another way of validating your users.

If it is merely a matter of thinking you might provide a better service, then think again. Suppose your site was offering restaurant reviews, and you as developer decide to give this based on the user's location, you might frustrate your user no end - for instance someone might be in Brussels, wanting to plan an evening in London, and you have worked out that your user is in Belgium, so you serve them restaurant reviews for Belgium. Quite rightly your users would be well hacked off at getting irrelevant material - and you, thinking that you were hero [for correctly guessing their location and only giving out local info] would quickly find yourself going for zero. In such a situation, it really is best to hand control to the users and let them choose their locale, rather than second guessing them and making a pig's ear of it.

easier to get uk ip allocated ip ranges.

As others have pointed out you don't use hostnames for this but rather IP addresses and don't expect it to work very well as many UK users' IP addresses are not registered as UK IPs.

There is a way to almost get it right which is to reverse the logic and test for IPs belonging to allocations identified as belonging in other countries. I do something similar to block any IP in .ng from trying to register for an account using the perl IP::Country::Fast module which works very well (those caught by it get redirected to this site

Mmm. Interesting concept. I used to work for a UK company with a US parent and a Dutch sister company. Our UK internet access was via a leased line to the Netherlands.

If I'd have tried to set up a personal account with you from my work PC you would have thought I was in the Netherlands and I would not have been impressed by your assumption that I was a criminal.