I have a question about location & IP addresses?

[Lee]

so i recently checked the stat counter on my Tumblr to find that someone from Boston, Massachusetts has visited my blog a shitload of times. i go to school in Portland, Oregon. however one of my friends who also goes to school here is FROM Boston, & they look at my blog frequently.

i have no idea how the location-tracking on IP addresses works. how likely is it that this friend is to blame for the page views? alternately how likely is it that some random-ass dude in Boston is checking my Tumblr 4x a day? um

[Orvelle Thomas]

If your friend claims its not him, then it may not be. It could possibly be a bot or a spider looking at your website.

[DunbarPappy®ϟϟ]

You belong to your iSP's 'Network' composed of all their customers.
They have several major hardware centers widely spread out, where they have rooms of servers, (and in many cases dedicated companies handle several iSP's; called "Multihoming" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multihoming ) handling all that traffic.
If during the day or night a server breaks down, or there's a sudden surge of traffic volume, they automatically would spread traffic across the rest of their servers to achieve 'load balancing'.
Once thru their hardware, your traffic exits the iSP server(s) onto the 'Net.
This is your Public iP that other devices on the 'Net 'see' and return traffic to.
Inbound traffic then goes back thru the iSP's hardware to you.

"Lookup" services see your Public iP server, which may be many kilometers distant from your physical location.
Because of this widely dispersed traffic 'dump', what you're seeing is perhaps not even close to the actual location of the person looking at your Tumblr. He/she could be right next door.