Caching Server 2 Has Broken Geolocation

OS X Maverick 10.9 Server 3.0 Caching Server 2 is a great idea: Create automatic local caches for all Apple Content. Unfortunately it has one big undocumented flaw. Caching server uses IP geolocation to avoid caching objects not available to be sold in other countries. More than that it restricts its cache to objects available in the store that it thinks your IP is from and will not serve cached content to an Apple account associated with a different store local.

After wrestling for a week trying to get iOS and Mac App Store content to cache I did a simple experiment. I created a new AppleID with no credit card and without changing the default country (India). Caching server worked! I downloaded an the free iOS app of the week and it loaded into the cache. But when I switched to my US Apple ID and downloaded the same App it did not come from the cahce. Switching back to the India Apple ID and the App came from the local cache again.

It's the same for iOS and Mac Apps. The unfortunate part is that Apple's geolocation isn't even right. I am in Mozambique, Africa, no where near India. Our local provider, Movitel, is correctly identified by many other IP geolocation services but Apple thinks we are in India. If I switch the App store account to another country, caching stops working. We have a satellite backup for which the hub is in Switzerland but most geolocation services mark it as Italy. Still, that's the wrong continent.

If you're having difficulties with caching server outside the US, create a new Apple ID and chack what the default country is (the flag on the bottom right of the create account page) You may be having the same issue.

It's particularly tragic because bandwidth is so expensive here 1Mbit/s is $1130/month. So caching server is a very valuable asset.

My recommendation to apple is to allow the cache to store objects from any country for which the requesting Apple ID has a billing address. Moreover, objects that are the same across multiple countries should be stored as a single object in the cache and provided to any Apple ID with a billing address in any one of the multiple countries for which it is available.

The simplest way to do it is just drop your GeoFencing. It's not the nature of the internet and causes the greatest harm to the locations that need caching the most. We are a multinational NGO/aid organization, each day we have 130 devices sharing 1Mb/s of bandwidth and in the last 6 months people from over 29 nations, most of whom carry an iPhone, iPad or a MacBook. We are the ultimate use case for caching server, please make it work.

We have a static IP

Our block on ARIN: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-197-0-0-0-1

freegeoip.net says we're in Mozambique

iplocation.net says we're in Mozambique and correctly identifies our ISP as Movitel SA, but in a city 2000km away

geobytes.com thinks we're in Italy (?)

Apple thinks this is India but also occationally South Africa, I wonder what caching server does when it changes it's mind about our IP?