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In a 2026 sample of 330 IPv4 addresses across 11 VPS providers, reverse DNS (PTR) records appeared on 49.4% of addresses, while 12.1% hit at least one of eight queried blocklists. Those figures describe sampled address space announced by the providers’ networks—not the odds that a customer will receive a PTR record or a clean IP. The blocklist result is also heavily concentrated in one list, so it is not a universal reputation score.
What was sampled, and what does that mean?
In an article published September 28, 2026, DEV Community author zihuama reports sampling 30 IPv4 addresses from each of 11 providers, for 330 addresses total, using the seed 20260928. The sampling frame was IPv4 space announced by each provider’s mapped autonomous system (AS), rather than a list of addresses assigned to customers. The author says each address’s BGP origin matched the target ASN in all 330 cases.
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The method selected candidate /24 pools from announced prefixes, sampled /24s, then selected a host address. A /24 is an approximation of customer allocation granularity, not proof that any selected address belonged to a customer VPS. The sample therefore describes a slice of announced network space. It does not reveal what a buyer will be assigned.
The author reports the sampler and raw records are available in a dataset named vps-audit-2026-09.json under CC BY 4.0 in the original article. These are details reported by the author, not independently verified here. The author also discloses building and maintaining pureip.app, an IP lookup and network diagnostics toolbox, and says the records were a byproduct of it.
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How did PTR coverage vary in the sample?
The author found PTR records for 163 of 330 addresses, or 49.4%. The table shows the reported rate within each provider’s 30-address sample; it is not a provider-wide rate or a probability for a new customer.
| Provider | Addresses with PTR | Sample rate |
|---|---|---|
| BandwagonHost | 30/30 | 100% |
| Hetzner | 29/30 | 96.7% |
| Contabo | 29/30 | 96.7% |
| RackNerd | 23/30 | 76.7% |
| Vultr | 18/30 | 60% |
| Linode | 16/30 | 53.3% |
| OVH | 11/30 | 36.7% |
| Oracle Cloud | 4/30 | 13.3% |
| DigitalOcean | 3/30 | 10% |
| Alibaba Cloud | 0/30 | 0% |
| Tencent Cloud | 0/30 | 0% |
All figures in this table are the author’s measurements of the 2026 sample. A provider’s default reverse-DNS policy can affect what appears in announced space, and policies and records may change. The observed spread—from 0% to 100%—is evidence of variation in this sample, not a ranking of service quality or a forecast for a particular assignment.
What does the blocklist figure actually count?
The author reports that 40 of 330 addresses, or 12.1%, appeared on at least one of eight queried public lists: all.s5h.net, bl.spamcop.net, dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net, dnsbl.dronebl.org, dnsbl.spfbl.net, hostkarma.junkemailfilter.com, psbl.surriel.com, and bl.blocklist.de. Of those 40 hits, 36 were attributed to dnsbl.spfbl.net.
That concentration matters: “at least one hit” combines lists with potentially different listing criteria, and it does not mean that eight independent systems agreed. The author reports RackNerd had 24 hits, one in each of 24 distinct sampled /24 blocks. The author interprets this pattern as suggestive of a list-level judgment about address space rather than 24 individually demonstrated spam sources, while noting that the policy’s defensibility cannot be assessed from outside. The pattern does not prove why any individual address was listed.
The article excluded zen.spamhaus.org because it refused queries from public resolvers. Accordingly, 12.1% means “at least one hit among these eight queried lists,” not “12.1% were universally blacklisted.” A clean result on these lists would not establish inbox placement, and a hit alone would not prove that mail will bounce. The author did not test sending, receiving, or delivery.
Why PTR, RDAP, and BGP can point to different names
These records answer different questions. BGP origin identifies the AS announcing a route; RDAP provides registration information; PTR maps an IP address to a reverse-DNS hostname. They need not name the same organization, and a hostname is not proof of ownership.
The author gives examples from the sample: a Vultr-origin address with a West Coast Internet Provider LLC RDAP registration and a Quadranet PTR; an Oracle-origin address registered to HostGator.com LLC with a UnifiedLayer PTR; and a RackNerd/ColoCrossing-origin address with a Quadranet PTR. Stale reverse DNS from a previous owner is one possible explanation for mismatches, but the author says it cannot be established from outside. Treat each field as a clue about a different network or administrative relationship, not as a definitive ownership record.
What can a VPS buyer take from these results?
- If you need reverse DNS: ask whether PTR is configurable for the specific address you receive and how to set it. The sample’s provider-level rates do not answer that customer-specific question.
- If you plan to send email: check the actual assigned IP and test the relevant mail setup and delivery behavior. These measurements are not a deliverability test, and the queried-list aggregate omits Spamhaus
zen. - If you are comparing providers: use the PTR figures only as results from these 30-address samples. For the blocklist result, note both the list responsible for a hit and the sample context rather than treating the aggregate as a general provider score.
- If you are investigating who operates an address: compare route origin, registration data, and reverse DNS, and avoid treating any one hostname as proof of ownership.
There is a further measurement caution in the article: an initially reported RDAP abuse-role result of 330/330 was withdrawn after the author found that the parser searched for the word “abuse” anywhere in the JSON instead of checking an entity’s role. A stricter recheck of ten records yielded 0/10. That spot check is not a population estimate; it illustrates why a metric’s definition and parser matter as much as its headline number.
Source and limits
All sample figures and examples above are attributed to zihuama’s DEV Community article, published September 28, 2026. The sampling, DNS, RDAP, and blocklist queries were not independently reproduced. Network announcements, assignments, registration records, PTR entries, and list contents can change, so these results are a time-bound snapshot rather than a current lookup for any specific IP.
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