[ncc-services-wg] New on RIPE Labs: A RIPE Atlas Probe for every RIPE NCC Member

At 15:31 03/11/2011 +0100, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
>Henk,
>
>good to hear from you again.
>
>RIPE Atlas is not intended for intra-AS measurements.  Operators
>generally have their networks very well instrumented.  RIPE Atlas is about
>situational awareness about the inter-AS mesh.  Of course we want to
>have a number of probes inside big ASes, but most stub ASes are nicely
>covered with one or two. We would not provide other than incidental
>intra-AS measuremenets from the proposed funding unless the operator
>concerned provides additional funding and the results will be both
>available and useful for the community.
>
>So I am indeed proposing to distribute the probes and benefits as
>equally among the membership as possible.  And the cost of 300 EUR for
>each member that you quote is for the deployment and two years of
>operations, so it comes down to EUR150/member/year  for the first
>two years.

I believe only 1% of the RIPE membership would make weekly use of such 
probes - you might believe I am way off and feel 10% of the RIPE membership 
would make use of such probes.  Well, there is a simple way to determine 
whether the membership wants to spend a few million Euro on this - ask them 
via a poll.  If a majority of those responding feel it is important - then 
you have your mandate.  If a majority think otherwise, you don't have a 
mandate to spend all that money.  It is called democracy.

-Hank


>About the usefulness of RIPE Atlas let me say just this much:
>At least one active probe in the network of each member would
>make for an unprecedented level of comprehensive active measurmenets.
>Products from these measurements are useful for detecting anomalies,
>monitoring trends and for analysing faults.
>
>Daniel