How do I use country blocking and where do I get GeoIP.dat ?
This is a paid feature.
In order to benefit from this feature please consider purchasing RSFirewall!
This feature allows you to ban entire IP ranges of addresses that belong to a certain country. The feature can be accessed here: backend > RSFirewall! > Configuration > Country Blocking.
This product includes GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from http://www.maxmind.com.
To be able to use this, you will first need to load a specialized IP - country database. RSFirewall! will provide an upload GeoIP database button and you can take these steps to download your IP database:
- Create an account for maxmind.com by signing up.
- An email will be sent to your registered email address.
- Follow the email instructions to firstly setup a password for your account (the email may take a while to send).
- After this is done, you will also need to generate a license key into the MaxMind account > Manage License Keys > Generate new license key (when asked "Will this key be used for GeoIP Update?" you can simply select "No"). Then you may need to wait a few minutes until your key is usable and afterwards add it within RSFirewall!'s Configuration > Country Blocking tab > MaxMind License Key field. After saving this configuration, you will be able to download the GeoLite2-Country database from their website by clicking on the blue button.
- In case the auto download fails, you can login and download the GeoLite2-Country database from their website ("Download Files" section).
- You'll need to click the GZIP link (check the above right screenshot - click to enlarge it) matching the GeoLite2-Country row, then upload it into the RSFirewall!'s Configuration > Country Blocking tab.
Tip: The database is updated every month. It is recommended to re-upload the file periodically.
Manual download: from your Maxmind account, access Download Files > GeoLite2 Country > Download GZIP - which would be further uploaded via RSFirewall!.
Once the database file is in place, you will be able to select which countries to block.