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

[cronss-posting to MAT WG as it is pertinent there as well]

On 04.11 08:21, Henk Uijterwaal wrote:
> ...
> 
> 150 euro/year is of the order of 2-3 engineer hours, somewhat depending
> on the economy where you are living.
> 
> > Products from these measurements are useful for detecting anomalies,
> > monitoring trends and for analysing faults.  
> 
> What product is currently included in the probes that solves an issue
> that most AS's have _and_ where the data from the probe can be used to
> solve the problem much faster, where much faster means 2-3 hours less
> work on an annual basis?  Right now, I don't see such application.  Is
> there something in the pipeline that we haven't heard about?

Thank you Henk for putting the cost in terms of something as tangible as this.

This message is long because of the number of scenarios. 
If youa are  pressed for time, jump to "Summary".


Here are a few scenarios that come to mind:

- Monitor Traffic Engineering Results

How does my traffic engineering affect actual latencies and losses?  
Does TE even do what I expect?  Today traffic engineering is mostly
monitored by comparing inbound flows from different peers before and
after some actions.  It can be difficult to even tell what path traffic
takes or will take from a specific source.  With RIPE Atlas widely
deployed and user defined measurements (UDM) in place you can check
inbound trajectories by running traceroutes and inbound latencies by
running pings and application measurements from distant areas of
interest towards your network.  This gives you insights that are very
hard to obtain otherwise in a comprehensive manner.  Also the
measurements will be useful when debugging with your peers and upstreams
because they come from the RIPE NCC, a well respected source and
everyone will be familiar with them.  I can easily see how you can save
2-3 engineer hours per year right here by eliminating guessing time and
speeding up analysis. 


- Is it slow for just me ?

We all know this scenario: An important customer complains that he
cannot get to his favourite content in Distanistan.  Or a content
customer complains that for "weeks" their hits from Distanistan have
decreased.  Of course you can check it out right now from the perspective
of your network. But how about the pespective from Distanistan or 
a comparison with others in your region?
With RIPE Atlas widely deployed you could set up a measurement from many
different places around your region to Distanistan for a week or so and
compare.  It is even likely that there is a probe in close
vicinity of Distanistan which can measure towards your network.  
If others have had problems with Distanistan too, it is likely that they
have set up measurements already.  All measurements are available in the
RIPE Atlas pool of measurements.  You can access those measurements
right when the customer complains.  At a minimum this may give you the
opportunity to explain to the customer that everyone, not just you, has a
problem and to prove it with measurements from an independent source,
the RIPE NCC.  The measurements will also allow you to concisely point
out the problem to your peers and up-streams.  I can easily see how this
will both save hours of engineering time, make the results of trouble
shooting better and help you be more credible with customers.


- Situational Awareness

Today, the routing plane is very well instrumented and we regularly see
"events" discussed on operational lists. Very often the effects
of these events on the transport plane are subject of speculation,
guessing and the occasional isolated measurement.  A widely deployed
RIPE Atlas will improve our situational awareness by giving us near real
time insight into the changes in latencies, packet trajectories and
packet losses which are caused by events on the routing plane.  The pool
of RIPE Atlas measurements will be a treasure trove from which we can
isolate signals both on the geographical and topological level.  We can
correlate them with events in the routing plane and gain a much
better insight into the state of the Internet as a whole.  A widely
deployed RIPE Atlas will become a common frame of reference for dealing
with regional and global events that involve many ASes.  Having such a
global frame of reference will in itself save many engineering hours by
enabling quick, concise and unambiguous communication about events on
the transport plane between routing engineers. 


- Long Term Comparative Analysis

How are we doing compared to others in our market, region, the world? 
This is a common question.  A widely deployed RIPE Atlas will help you
answer those questions from an outside view in terms of stability,
packet loss and latency.  The measurements will be comparable and they
come from a trusted external source.  Building an infrastructure to do
this ourselves is beyond the resources of most or even all of us.  Doing
it together makes this possible. For the equivalent of just 2-3 engineering 
hours per year we can make it happen. 


- Summary

Referring to a common, well known measurement platform for the transport
plane will save many engineer hours just by speeding up communication
and preventing misunderstandings.  RIPE Atlas will improve
communications with your peers, up-streams and sophisticated customers
by introducing hard transport plane data and a common frame of
reference.  RIPE Atlas will bring to the transport plane what we already
have for the routing plane with route views and RIS.  This alone will
save more than 3 engineering hours per year for everyone.  Add the unprecedented
situational awareness of actual latencies, packet losses and packet
trajectories and the credibility of the RPE NCC as a source of data, then
one RIPE Atlas probe for every RIPE NCC member becomes a baragin. 

I realise thatwe have not realised most of the products I talk about. 
However we do have the architecture in place and almost 900 probes out
there now.  We also have some first examples of useful products:

http://atlas.ripe.net/atlas/rtt_maps.html?msm_id=1001
http://atlas.ripe.net/atlas/comparative_root_rtt.html
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/kistel/new-ripe-atlas-features-in-the-making

AS a probe host you can also look at measurement results from a large 
number of  public probes at http://atlas.ripe.net/atlas/myprobes.html
after registering.

In the coming 6 months we will deploy user defined measurements and the
measurement pool.  We will also show more "map" products for
situational awareness.  We will convince you that speeding up RIPE Atlas
deployment by providing at least one probe for every member is worth it.
I am sure we can even convince the executive board that we should start
this already in 2012 and not wait for the 2013 budget cycle.  Watch this
space. 

Daniel