IP_database mirrors the geolocation databases that keep going stale

A mirror site for databases that expire or need a key

Geolocation databases are an awkward dependency. Some are free but require you to register for a key and accept a licence, some are paid, and some have quietly stopped being updated while remaining widely used. IP_database exists to smooth that over. It is a site at ip.adysec.com that republishes several of the most common IP to location databases, and the repository description lists them one by one, with GeoLite updated daily, the qqwry ip database updated daily, ip2region updated daily, 17monipdb updated daily, ipv6wry updated daily, IPDB updated daily and DB-IP updated daily. The primary language of the repository is listed as HTML, which is consistent with a project that is really a publishing pipeline and a set of download links rather than a library you import.

The qqwry dat file, and why the format stopped moving

The qqwry database is the Chinese one, a dat file that is not an exe installer, and the README is direct about its status: the official dat format stopped being maintained in October 2024, and the official source no longer publishes files in that format. That is the single most important fact for anyone choosing this mirror, because a format that upstream no longer updates cannot be kept current by anyone, only copied. The download is a direct link to a qqwry.dat file under the qqwry path on the mirror. The repository also contains a qqwry directory and a qqwry.py script, and the README credits the nmgliangwei qqwry project with removing the innoextract workflow work, and the innoextract directory is present at the root of this repository too, so the mirror inherits that simplification.

GeoLite comes in ASN, city and country flavours

The GeoLite section is the one that stays marked as continuously updated, and it is split into three files with the same naming convention as the upstream MaxMind free tier. GeoLite2-ASN.mmdb is the ASN database file, GeoLite2-City.mmdb is the city attribution database, and GeoLite2-Country.mmdb is the country database. All three are MaxDB format, which is what a geolocation library expects when you point it at a .mmdb path. The README credits the P3TERX GeoLite.mmdb project and says plainly that it was copied over without a key, which is both the mechanism of the mirror and the licensing question you have to answer for yourself. The geolite directory at the root of the repository is the corresponding local copy, and the site is where the daily refreshed versions are published.

ip2region, IPDB and 17monipdb cover three different lookup styles

The remaining formats are worth separating by how they are queried rather than by who publishes them. ip2region is distributed as an xdb file, and the README marks it as continuously updated, with the download under the ip2region path. IPDB is distributed as a free city file, also marked as continuously updated. The 17monipdb database is a dat file, and its status line is the damning one: the official project stopped being maintained in June 2018, which makes the daily update claim here a statement about the mirror's own refresh, not about new upstream data. The repository root has a directory for each of these, 17monipdb, ip2region and ipdb, so the repository mirrors the site layout rather than adding tooling on top of it.

DB-IP fills the gaps MaxMind left with a free tier

The DB-IP section adds three more MaxDB files, and this is the part of the catalogue most people will recognise as a practical substitute. There is a city attribution file, an ASN attribution file and a country attribution file, all in the lite flavour, and all three are marked as continuously updated. The names follow the same pattern as the GeoLite ones, which is convenient if your code already handles the MaxMind reader and simply takes a path. The db-ip directory at the root of the repository holds the local copies, and the direct links follow the same shape as the other sections, so a script that resolves a URL per database type works across the whole catalogue without special cases.

Where the download URLs live and what a script would do

There is no installation step in the usual sense, because nothing is compiled and nothing is imported. The project is a set of files and a download path, and the README states the download path as ip.adysec.com. Each database has its own direct link, and the pattern is one path segment for the source, one for the file. The GeoLite set is three links:

- `https://ip.adysec.com/geolite/GeoLite2-ASN.mmdb`

### GeoLite2-City.mmdb
GeoLite 城市归属地数据库文件  
下载直链：
- `https://ip.adysec.com/geolite/GeoLite2-City.mmdb`

The qqwry file, the ip2region file, the 17monipdb file and the IPDB file are reached the same way, under qqwry, ip2region, 17monipdb and ipdb. The repository root also holds a CNAME file, which is the custom domain configuration for a GitHub Pages site, an index.html that is the landing page, and a date.txt that records the update date. There is no script in the documented flow that resolves these for you, so consuming this project means writing that lookup yourself, or pointing an existing tool at the mirror.

The licence of the mirror and of the databases are different questions

The repository is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, and the LICENSE file is at the root. That licence covers the mirror project, the publishing pipeline and the site. It does not settle the terms of the databases being republished, because each of those comes from a different upstream with its own agreement, and the README's own description of how the GeoLite files were obtained, copied over without a key, is the reason to think carefully rather than assume the GPL grant extends to the data. The same split applies to the Chinese qqwry database, whose upstream is a separate project with separate terms. Nothing here is legal advice, but the practical point is that a mirror that republishes other people's files under a copyleft licence of its own does not grant you rights to those files.

Daily refresh is a promise about the mirror, not about the source

The maintenance story is the part to hold onto when reading the description, which claims daily updates for every listed database. That claim is about the mirror refreshing its copies, and it is a different statement from the upstream project continuing to publish new data. The README makes the distinction explicit in two places, by noting that the dat format stopped being maintained in October 2024 and that 17monipdb stopped in June 2018. A daily refresh of a frozen file produces the same bytes each time, which is fine for reproducibility and useless for freshness. The repository has one tagged release, v1.0.0 from 2025-01-20, and the last push was on 2026-10-19, so the code is moving while the tag history is thin. For a mirror whose value is its data, the download date written to date.txt is a more useful freshness signal than the release list.

Editorial conclusion

IP_database suits a developer who needs a country or city lookup file today and does not want to register for a MaxMind account or wait for a vendor subscription, and it suits a project that already depends on one of the mirrored formats. It does not suit a team with a commercial licence question, since the mirror is GPL-3.0 while the underlying databases carry their own terms, and it does not suit a long lived deployment that assumes the dat format keeps improving. Before adopting, check the upstream status of the format you plan to use, since the README marks both the dat format and 17monipdb as no longer maintained upstream, and note that the last push to the repository was on 2026-10-19.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. adysec/IP_database on GitHub
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases