[atlas] Protocol/Technology testing?

Folks,

Considering Daniel's initial question, I don't think that an extension to ICMP will help. Most probably, the solution is for ATLAS nodes to send a more diverse mix of traffic (ICMP, HTTP, HTTPS IPSEC) and report results.

While discussion of RFC 4884 and draft-shen was interesting, it doesn't solve Daniel's problem.

                                                    Ron

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fred Baker [mailto:fred at cisco.com]
> Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2012 10:22 PM
> To: Carlos Pignataro; Dan.Tappan at gmail.com; derhwagan at yahoo.com; Ronald
> Bonica
> Cc: ripe-atlas at ripe.net; Daniel AJ Sokolov
> Subject: Re: [atlas] Protocol/Technology testing?
> 
> Question for you:
> 
> RFC 4884 says that ICMP/ICMPv6 define an Echo Request/Reply message,
> but as I read it doesn't permit the use of that structure with the Echo
> Request or Reply. It seems like RFC 4884 would help in this context.
> 
> For example, if Atlas Probes and their servers use NTP to synchronize
> time, an Echo Request could contain the time the message was sent, and
> the service could deduce one-way delay. The response could similarly
> include a timestamp, the probe could calculate one-way delay, and
> report the time and delta-time of that response in its next request.
> Additionally, the service could command a probe to additionally
> traceroute to another probe, and the probe could later report its
> experience.
> 
> What would it take to facilitate the use of RFC 4884 extensions with
> ICMP/ICMPv6?
> 
> 
> On Feb 12, 2012, at 1:00 AM, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > Are there any plans to extend the Atlas probe's functionality from
> simple Pings to more sophisticated testing?
> >
> > For example:
> > Can actual payloads be transferred (http, ftp, SMTP, NNTP etc.) and
> with which parameters?
> > Is encryption available (https, ssh, starttls, etc.)?
> >
> > Some countries and/or ISPs restrict what users can do.
> >
> > Currently, Iran is inhibiting all encrypted international connection.
> For the users on the ground this is horrible - no gmail, no yahoo, no
> online banking, no Tor network - no proivacy!
> >
> > Yet on the Atlas network everything seems to be fine, as pings still
> work. (However, only one of the six probes is online, the rest has been
> offline for weeks. And the one that is online was offline for weeks
> until a few days ago. I'm not sure what the issue is there.)
> >
> > It would be good to know if some protocols are not available in a
> certain jurisdiction. Of course, such tests could be done at a much
> lower rate than Pings - some maybe every hour, others every couple of
> hours.
> >
> > Then again, the probes might not be mighty enough?
> >
> > BR
> > Daniel AJ
> >
> > --
> > Follow me on twitter @newstik http://twitter.com/newstik
> >