Is my VPN working?
Data centre
Anthropic, PBC Columbus, Ohio, United States
216.73.216.229 Location
- United States Country
The country your address block is registered to. Of everything on this page, this is the value that is almost always right.
- Columbus City
A commercial database's best guess, based on where your provider registered the block. It is often the nearest large city rather than yours.
- Ohio Region
The first-level administrative area recorded against the block — state, province, oblast or the local equivalent.
- 43215 Postal code
From the same database as the city and no more precise than it. It is the postcode of an area, not of an address.
- America/New_York Time zone
Derived from the place your address maps to. Compare it with your browser's time zone: a mismatch usually means a VPN.
- 09:57 Local time
The current time where your address appears to be — not necessarily the time where you actually are.
- 39.96118, -82.99879 Coordinates
The centre of the area the database covers, not your position. Suspiciously round numbers mean it only knew the country.
- No In the EU
Whether that country is in the European Union. It matters because the GDPR treats an IP address as personal data.
Network
- Anthropic, PBC Provider
The organisation that registered your address range. Resellers and mobile groups often register under a parent company's name, so this is not always the company you pay.
- AS16509 AS number
The autonomous system number: your provider's identity in the internet's global routing table. Every network that exchanges routes has one, and it is the most reliable way to say who owns an address.
- Data centre Network type
Whether the address belongs to a home connection, a data centre, or a network that exists to relay traffic. This is a heuristic, not a certainty.
- Looking up… Hostname
The name your address resolves to in reverse DNS, if the network operator published one. Plenty do not.
This connection comes from a data centre. That is normal for a VPN, a cloud desktop or a corporate proxy — and also for a server. Sites see a hosting network rather than your home provider.
Your time zone does not match your IP address. Your browser reports one time zone while your address resolves to another. Any site that compares the two can tell the address is not where you are. Most VPN clients do not fix this.
A VPN only protects what actually travels through it. Split tunnelling, a dropped connection, a browser extension that quietly turned itself off, a DNS query escaping outside the tunnel — each leaves you believing you are covered while the traffic goes out in the clear. This page shows what a website sees from you right now.
Reading the result
Network type is the fastest signal. A working consumer VPN puts you on a hosting or VPN network, because that is where exit servers live. If it says home or mobile connection and the provider is the one you pay every month for broadband, the tunnel is not carrying this browser.
Provider should name the VPN company, or the data centre operator it rents capacity from — M247, Datacamp, Leaseweb and similar names are normal here.
Country should be the exit location you selected. If it is not, the address block may have been reassigned faster than geolocation databases track.
The check most tests skip
Your browser reports its own time zone, taken from your operating system settings. Connecting a VPN does not change it. So a site can compare the time zone implied by your IP address with the one your browser announces, and a mismatch is a strong hint that the address is not where you are.
This page runs that comparison. It is not a flaw in your VPN so much as a reminder that an IP address is only one of many things your browser volunteers.
What a VPN does not hide
A VPN moves the address. It does nothing about:
- accounts you are signed in to — the strongest identifier there is;
- cookies and storage already set in your browser;
- browser fingerprinting: fonts, screen size, language, rendering quirks;
- anything you type into a form yourself.
Treat a VPN as a way to change which network you appear to come from, not as anonymity.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know the VPN is on?
The provider above should be your VPN company or the data centre it rents from — not your home ISP. If you still see your own provider's name, your traffic is not going through the tunnel.
What does 'data centre' mean here?
The address belongs to a hosting network rather than a consumer one. That is the expected result with a VPN. It is also what you would see from a server, a cloud desktop or a corporate proxy.
My VPN is on but the country is wrong. Why?
You are connected to an exit server in that country, or the geolocation database has not caught up with a recently reassigned block. VPN address blocks move between locations often and databases lag by weeks.
Why does my time zone give me away?
Your browser reports the time zone your operating system is set to, and it does not change when you connect a VPN. A site that compares the two sees the mismatch immediately. Very few VPN clients address this.