[deanhills]

@deanhills

From the specifics included in the Virmach quote, the IP does indeed belong to an Arizona-based IP range; ie it's a US IP (thus my reasoning was wrong about it being German.)

By default, Speedtest tries to chose the most suitable host (host with the lowest latency -ie. the nearest- from its list) before running its test. That's what made think the IP was German, given that the host in your test was in Frankfurt. What happens to the latency when you run that test against a host in the US south (TX, AZ NV..) ? Did you try that?

Reading the rest of your response, I would say that the IP is Arizona-based and the first public router it hits is in Las Vegas, NV.

... But I still maintain that port 22 is hard-coded somewhere in their "protected networking" setup which prevents you from changing it.

Sorry if I've added to your confusion :-)

No apology needed @fChk. My challenge is/was that the traceroute test from the VPS to my ISP didn't show my new ("German") IP as the first IP.  The first IP shown is a 107 IP from Las Vegas, Nevada.  The IP I've been given, that the Speedtest shows as German, is not mentioned at all in the traceroute result.  The traceroute path sees the VPS as having the 107 IP that comes from Las Vegas.

Now only explanation that can make sense for me is that my new IP is protected and when it is protected it is hidden.  So it wasn't shown in the traceroute.  The traceroute results skipped to the next IP 107 Las Vegas Nevada and hid the first IP - which is my new IP.  That's why I can't see it.

I found a different IP test as well that pretty much corroborated what you said - i.e. location is US:

https://www.ip2location.com/50.xx.xx.xx

Translates IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) to country, region or state, city, latitude and longitude, ZIP/Postal code, time zone, Internet Service Provider (ISP) or company name, domain name, net speed, area code, weather station code, weather station name, mobile country code (MCC), mobile network code (MNC) and carrier brand, elevation, and usage type.

And the result of that test for my new VPS IP is:

Country United States of America [US]
Region Nevada
City Las Vegas
Coordinates of City 36.174970, -115.137220 (36°10'30"N   115°8'14"W)
ISP Virtual Machine Solutions LLC
Local Time 31 Dec, 2019 06:59 AM (UTC -08:00)
Domain virmach.com
Net Speed (COMP) Company/T1
IDD & Area Code (1) 702
ZIP Code 89044
Weather Station Las Vegas (USNV0049)
Mobile Carrier -
Mobile Country Code - MCC -
Mobile Network Code - MNC -
Elevation 607m
Usage Type (DCH) Data Center/Web Hosting/Transit
Anonymous Proxy No
Proxy Type (DCH) Hosting Provider, Data Center or CDN Range
Proxy ASN 62904 Eonix Corporation
Proxy Last Seen 30 Days
Olson Time Zone America/Los_Angeles

I used a VPN as well with Canada location, and whatismyipaddress then showed two locations for my IP - Frankfurt in Germany and Las Vegas, Nevada.

It's still confusing, as the new IP I have been given looks like a typical German Frankfurt IP.  I  visited Virmach's Looking Glass giving test IPs for all of its locations and the German location looking glass IP almost matches my IP exactly:
https://billing.virmach.com/knowledgebas...tions.html

So maybe your original conclusion that the US is running out of IPs may be true as well. I still don't have a really good understanding of how it works, but it's at least better than right at the beginning.