[RIPE Atlas Ambassadors] Probes behind Hotspots or alike

Dear Colleagues,

As some folks mentioned, some networks need some sort of authentication to let the users get to the internet.

I must add that of hotspots, be it by cookie, MAC, https, etc. Others may need a PPPoE connection to be established beforehand (home routers usually can do this, but not everyone can configure that, and that is not an option at work of course).
At least in one location, I myself had to trick the hotspot by putting my probe behind a mikrotik router to do nat. Other users do not necessarily have that level of knowledge or resources.

Even in the case of nat-router, any sudden logouts, power recycle or RAS kicks from ISP or IT department, may lead to disconnection of the probe(s) from atlas network for undetermined period of time.
The worst case happens when the host is not around to re-login, e.g. at midnight or weekends or when you are long gone for vacation.

I am not going to conclude that probes should have direct interfaces to resolve this, but this matter should be addressed in some way (maybe similar to the static address configuration) in the next firmware updates.

Regards,
M. Tajbakhsh​

Lecturer, Advisor

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