How to verify that a German mobile proxy is really on O2, Vodafone or 1&1

Short answer

Get the proxy's exit IP, look up which autonomous system (ASN) announces it, and compare that number with the carrier's row in the table below: AS6805 for O2, AS3209 for Vodafone, AS8881 for 1&1's registered access ranges. A match shows the address belongs to that operator's network. It doesn't show a phone or a SIM card, because all three networks also carry fixed lines. An ASN that belongs to a hosting company, or to a company other than these three, means the proxy isn't on the carrier it names.

ipvolt sells Germany mobile proxies on O2, Vodafone and 1&1, so those are the three carriers covered here. What this post is based on:

• Public records only, looked up on 12 November 2026: the RIPE database, RDAP, PeeringDB, the carriers' own pages and RFCs.
• No proxy. We rented and used no proxy device for this post. The table says what the registries say, not what a device showed.
• The general method is in how to check if a proxy is really mobile or residential, which ran these checks on a live mobile line and a datacenter IP. This post adds the German carriers.
• The data. Every lookup and its time is in the records file. Sample addresses are cut to /24 there and here.

The table: German carriers and their ASNs

The operator column follows the Bundesnetzagentur, whose subscriber table (dated 10 September 2026) lists Telekom, Vodafone, Telefónica and 1&1 Mobilfunk as network operators and notes "D2-Netz = Vodafone" and "E2-Netz = Telefónica Germany (Marke o2)". All three ASNs are registered with the RIPE NCC: IANA's bootstrap file sends each of them to RIPE's RDAP server, and each holder's organisation record there gives the country DE.

What the registry adds for each carrier:

• O2. Telefónica names some ranges inside AS6805 by purpose. 176.0.0.0/16 is registered as MOBILE-POOL-NET and 46.114.0.0/16 as MOBILE-NATPOOL-NET. An exit IP in a range named like that is the best registry evidence there is for an O2 mobile line. A second ASN, AS13184 (HANSENET), is also registered to Telefónica Germany; its record says "AS13184 will be merged to AS6805".
• Vodafone. The AS3209 record calls it the "International IP-Backbone of Vodafone". Inside it, 80.226.0.0/19 is described as "Mobile APN NAT Pool", and the block from 80.226.64.0 to 80.226.255.255 as "Mobile Internet Access (2G&3G)". Two more ASNs are registered to Vodafone companies under cable network names: AS31334 (KABELDEUTSCHLAND-AS, Vodafone GmbH) and AS20825 (UNITYMEDIA, Vodafone West GmbH).
• 1&1. This row is the least certain, and the records explain why:
  • Its own network. 1&1 has run its own mobile network since 8 December 2023. On 11 November 2025 it announced that the move of its customers to that network was finished: "Alle 1&1 Kundinnen und Kunden nutzen nun das moderne 5G-Netz" (1&1). Before that it sold mobile service as a reseller on other operators' networks, so older articles may map 1&1 differently.
  • Roaming. Where its own network isn't available, customers connect "über Antennen unseres National-Roaming-Partners Vodafone" (1&1 Netzcheck).
  • No mobile ASN on record. On 12 November 2026 the RIPE database had no organisation called 1&1 Mobilfunk, and no ASN registered to 1&1 Telecom GmbH.
  • What is on record. Access ranges registered to 1&1 Telecom GmbH, such as 109.250.0.0/17, are named ONEANDONE-ACCESS and carry the remark "routed by AS8881". AS8881 belongs to 1&1 Versatel GmbH. No record says which of these ranges serve mobile customers.
  • So: AS8881 is where the registry points for a 1&1 line. We did not confirm it on a 1&1 SIM.

Step by step

1. Get the exit IP through the proxy

curl -s -x "http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT" https://api.ipify.org

Put your proxy's username, password, host and port in place of the capitals; for SOCKS5, start the URL with socks5h://. The answer is the address the echo service saw, which is the exit IP. The proxy's own hostname or gateway address is not. If the address changes between two runs, look up each one.

The commands below use 203.0.113.7, an address reserved for documentation (RFC 5737), and AS64496, a number reserved for documentation (RFC 5398). Put your exit IP and its ASN in their place. They also use jq to cut the JSON down to the fields that matter.

2. Look up the ASN and the registered range

RIPEstat's network-info call returns the announced prefix and the ASN that announces it. RDAP, the registries' JSON interface, returns the registered range and its name; the ip/ and autnum/ paths are defined in RFC 9082. RIPE's server answers for ranges registered with RIPE and redirects other queries to the right registry (RIPE Database docs), which is why the commands pass -L.

curl -s "https://stat.ripe.net/data/network-info/data.json?resource=203.0.113.7" | jq -c '.data'
curl -sL "https://rdap.db.ripe.net/ip/203.0.113.7" | jq '{handle, name, country, type, remarks: [.remarks[]?.description[]]}'

We ran both on two real addresses on 12 November 2026. The first is a carrier address: 176.0.10.x, inside Telefónica Germany's publicly announced range 176.0.0.0/13.

{"asns":["6805"],"prefix":"176.0.0.0/13"}
{
  "handle": "176.0.0.0 - 176.0.255.255",
  "name": "MOBILE-POOL-NET",
  "country": "DE",
  "type": "ASSIGNED PA",
  "remarks": [
    "Telefonica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG",
    "Georg-Brauchle-Ring 50",
    "80992 Muenchen"
  ]
}

The second is a datacenter address: our lab server's own cloud IP, 204.168.249.x.

{"asns":["24940"],"prefix":"204.168.128.0/17"}
{
  "handle": "204.168.240.0 - 204.168.255.255",
  "name": "CLOUD-HEL1",
  "country": "FI",
  "type": "ASSIGNED PA",
  "remarks": [
    "INFRA-AW"
  ]
}

Then ask who holds the ASN:

curl -sL "https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/64496" | jq '{handle, name, holder: [.entities[] | select(.handle | startswith("ORG-")) | .vcardArray[1][] | select(.[0] == "fn") | .[3]]}'

For AS6805 and AS24940 this returned:

{
  "handle": "AS6805",
  "name": "TDDE-ASN1",
  "holder": [
    "Telefonica Germany GmbH & Co.OHG"
  ]
}
{
  "handle": "AS24940",
  "name": "HETZNER-AS",
  "holder": [
    "Hetzner Online GmbH"
  ]
}

3. Check the network type in PeeringDB

PeeringDB is where networks describe themselves to other networks. Its API answers without an account:

curl -s "https://www.peeringdb.com/api/net?asn=64496" | jq -c '.data[] | {name, aka, info_types, info_scope}'

For the same two ASNs:

{"name":"Telefónica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG","aka":"former Telefonica Deutschland, former mediaWays GmbH","info_types":["NSP"],"info_scope":"Europe"}
{"name":"Hetzner Online","aka":"","info_types":["Content"],"info_scope":"Europe"}

The type is "self-declared and might be rarely updated" (PeeringDB). None of the three German entries says mobile: Telefónica lists NSP, Vodafone and 1&1 Versatel list Cable/DSL/ISP. So PeeringDB can separate a carrier from a hosting or content network. It can't confirm a mobile line.

4. Compare with the table

• The ASN is the carrier's row. The address is in that operator's network. For O2 and Vodafone, also compare the range name from step 2 with the mobile ranges named above.
• The ASN is a different one from the same group (AS13184, AS31334, AS20825, or AS8560, covered below). It is registered to the group, but it isn't the ASN the mobile-labelled ranges are announced from. Ask the seller which network the SIM is on.
• Any other ASN. The proxy isn't on that carrier.

Reverse DNS is an optional fifth check:

dig -x 203.0.113.7 +short

We looked up one address in each named range on 12 November 2026. The last octet is masked:

web.vodafone.de is also the access point name Vodafone gives customers for mobile internet (Vodafone). We found no page where the operators document these names, and each row is one address, so treat a name as a supporting detail and not as proof.

The fast way: ipvolt's proxy checker

Paste the proxy into the free proxy checker as host:port:user:pass or as a URL. It connects through the proxy to ipvolt's own endpoint and shows the result in one row. Read three fields:

• Exit IP: the address to look up.
• ASN and network: the AS number, the network's name from the DB-IP Lite database, and a network type. Compare the AS number with the table.
• Location: the city DB-IP Lite gives for the exit IP. The next section explains why the city can be off.

The checker only accepts proxies, so we ran its lookup code on the four sample addresses instead. It returned:

The type is an estimate made from the ASN, as the label says. It does not test the device.

What can look wrong and still be fine

• A different German city. Three free IP databases placed our two carrier samples like this on 12 November 2026:

  Sample	ipinfo	DB-IP	IP2Location.io
  176.0.10.x (O2)	Berlin	Berlin	Strausberg, Brandenburg
  80.226.1.x (Vodafone)	Bernburg, Saxony-Anhalt	Düsseldorf	Platz, Sachsen-Anhalt

  The registry doesn't settle it. The MOBILE-POOL-NET record carries a Telefónica address in Munich, and RIPE says of the country attribute that "it cannot be used in any reliable way to map IP addresses to countries" (RIPE Database docs).

• An address shared with other subscribers. A carrier-grade NAT (CGN) is a function "used to share the same IPv4 address among several subscribers" (RFC 6888). RFC 6598 reserves 100.64.0.0/10 for the carrier's side of it. Both Telefónica and Vodafone register mobile ranges as NAT pools: MOBILE-NATPOOL-NET, o2-Germany-Customer-NATPool-MUN and "Mobile APN NAT Pool". For 1&1 we found no record either way.

• Old company names. Compare the AS number, not the name. All of these appear in the records for the three networks:

  • Telefónica: allocations named DE-MEDIAWAYS, and "former mediaWays GmbH" in PeeringDB.
  • Vodafone: DE-D2VODAFONE, DE-ARCOR and the AS name VODANET.
  • 1&1: VERSATEL and versanet.de.

• A fixed-line network type. Vodafone and 1&1 Versatel list Cable/DSL/ISP because the same ASN carries their fixed lines. Telefónica also sells O2 home internet over fibre, cable, DSL and 4G/5G (Telefónica).

• A 1&1 line on Vodafone antennas. 1&1's roaming sentence is about the radio link. It doesn't say which IP network the traffic leaves from, and we did not measure it.

Signs it isn't a real mobile connection

1. The ASN is registered to a hosting company. Our lab server is in AS24940, HETZNER-AS, held by Hetzner Online GmbH. Its range is named CLOUD-HEL1 and its reverse DNS name is static.x.249.168.204.clients.your-server.de.
2. PeeringDB lists the network as Content. Hetzner's entry does. A hosting or content type doesn't fit a mobile carrier.
3. The ASN belongs to another company or another registry. The three holders are German companies with ASNs at the RIPE NCC. If RDAP redirects you to another registry, or names a holder that isn't in the table, the exit isn't in these networks.
4. A "1&1" line in AS8560. AS8560 is IONOS-AS, registered to IONOS SE. Its record calls it "the joint network for IONOS, Fasthosts, Arsys, 1&1 Mail and Media and 1&1 Telecom", and ipvolt's checker lists it as hosting. A 1&1 name in the record doesn't make it the mobile network.
5. The right ASN but a pool with a different name. In AS3209, our samples in 2.200.0.0/14 and 90.186.0.0/17 had names starting with dslb- under pools.vodafone-ip.de, unlike the names in the mobile-labelled ranges. That is a reason to ask the seller, not proof.

What these checks can't tell you

• The device. An ASN describes a network. All three carry fixed lines too, so a matching ASN can't tell a phone from a home router.
• Whether the labels are current. Range names and PeeringDB types are whatever the holder wrote. The Vodafone range still described as "2G&3G" was last changed in January 2023.
• 1&1 mobile addresses. No public record marks them, and we tested no 1&1 line.
• Roaming. Nothing here shows which antennas a line used.
• How many people share the address. A carrier NAT can't be seen from outside.
• How a website will treat the address. These checks say who the address is registered to and who announces it. They don't predict any site's decision.
• Tomorrow's records. The table is the registry's state on 12 November 2026. Look the ASN up again before you rely on it.

To test a line before you rely on it, use the checklist in how to test a Germany proxy. Carriers, prices and stock are on the Germany mobile proxies page.

Check a proxy now: paste it into ipvolt's free proxy checker, then compare the ASN it shows with the table above.

Need a German mobile IP on O2, Vodafone or 1&1? Dedicated mobile proxies from $9 a day.