MaxMind GeoIP database legacy version discontinued
Sunday, February 11. 2018
MaxMind GeoIP is pretty much the de-facto way of doing IP-address based geolocation. I've personally set up the database updates from http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/ to at least dozen different systems. In addition, there are a lot of open-source software, which can utilize those databases, if they are available. Wireshark, IPtables, Bind DNS, to mention few.
The announcement on their site says:
We will be discontinuing updates to the GeoLite Legacy databases as of April 1, 2018. You will still be able to download the April 2018 release until January 2, 2019. GeoLite Legacy users will need to update their integrations in order to switch to the free GeoLite2 or commercial GeoIP databases by April 2018.
In three month's time most software won't be able to use freshly updated GeoIP databases anymore for the sole reason, that NOBODY bothered to update to their new .mmdb DB-format.
To make this clear:
MaxMind will keep providing free-of-charge GeoIP-databases even after 1st April 2018. They're just forcing people to finally take the leap forward and migrate to their newer libraries and databases.
This is a classic case of human laziness. No developer saw the incentive to update to a new format, as it offers precisely the same data than the legacy format. It's just a new file format more suitable for the task. Now the incentive is there and there isn't too much of time to make the transition. What we will see (I guarantee you this!) in 2019 and 2020 and onwards software still running in legacy format using outdated databases providing completely incorrect answers. 
This won't happen often, but these outdated databases will reject your access on occasion, or claim that you're a fraudster.
