Why does the whole internet think I'm in Ireland?

[jebediah]

Hello everyone, newb here.

For about a week now when I've gone to google.com it has redirected me to the google.ie homepage. Now I'm used to being redirected to google.co.uk, which is fair enough, but I'm in Derby, England - not Non-Specific, Ireland. Many banner adverts have been coming up specific to Ireland (topgear.ie, in gmail, for instance). I like Ireland, and the Irish, but take my word for it, I don't live there.

Now, it would be a very minor annoyance that I could easily live with but it affects one other thing noticably. That is that bbc iplayer thinks it can't show me anything cos of territorial copyright reasons.

Has anyone any idea what has happened?

[cimt]

Click "Connection" at the top and see where it says you are.

[charlieannear]

Someone else was having this a few days ago...

[jebediah]

Hi cimt, thanks for your help, and forgive me if I'm being very hard work, but click connection at the top of where? I don't quite understand?

[danielf]

Hi cimt, thanks for your help, and forgive me if I'm being very hard work, but click connection at the top of where? I don't quite understand?

On the top of this page (where it reads: Arcade, Articles, Chat, Connection).

[joglynne]

I can't help I'm afraid but some one else has recently had a similar problem. You can see their thread here. (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33633314-google-com-goes-to-google-ie.html)

[cimt]

Where it says the following:

Arcade Articles Chat Connection Speed Test Reported Posts Top Posters

[jebediah]

thanks everyone, i clicked connection and got that it was a virgin media connection in the location:

cpc2-derb10-0-0-cust263.leic.cable.ntl.com

[cimt]

So you're on the correct UBRs. Hmmm, it says that you're in Leicester so I don't know the problem, sorry.

[jebediah]

Well, the good news is that the instructions in that other thread seem to have sorted it all out. Thanks for your help, everyone. :)

[joglynne]

Glad you're sorted.

[jebediah]

For the benefit of anyone else who might pop in here with this, these are the instructions that I followed:

To set up a proxy in Firefox, go to Menu/Tools/Options and select the Advanced icon at the top and then the Network tab.
Now select Connection Settings and click on "Manual proxy configuration", enter webcache.virginmedia.com as the HTTP Proxy and 8080 as the Port, and click OK and exit.
You may need to restart Firefox (or even reboot) for the changes to take effect.
I'm sure other browsers will have similar options in the configuration section.
Many routers also have the facility, which could be useful for problems with other http applications and multiple devices.

Fortunately, I use Firefox, but I've just checked with IE7 and it's still all Ireland-y. But it was simple enough to alter, so here goes with my attempt at explaining it (feel free to clarify things on my behalf, anyone)

In Internet Explorer got to Menu/Tools/Internet Options then select the Connections Tab.
Click the LAN settings button. Tick the use a proxy server for your LAN box. In the address box put webcache.virginmedia.com and in the port box put 8080. Click OK.

Many thanks to ceedee for the original information in the other thread.

[frogstamper]

I had this problem a while back with the i-player saying I wasn't in the UK, it turned out to be the Google web accelerator that I'd downloaded, once I'd turned it off the problem was gone.

[PeteTheMusicGuy]

I had this problem a while back with the i-player saying I wasn't in the UK, it turned out to be the Google web accelerator that I'd downloaded, once I'd turned it off the problem was gone.

I think Google's Euro HQ is based in Dublin :)