[atlas] Why has probe growth stagnated?

I think it’s worth first considering a couple questions:  what is the goal here, and what are the constraints on meeting that goal? 

If the goal is “lots and lots of probes in ever increasing numbers,” than spinning up lots of VM probes would be great.  It would be an easy way to get probes in large numbers cheaply and efficiently.  But if the goal is to do actual network performance measurements from the perspective of the end users who actually use the Internet, that doesn’t help much. 

Where Atlas really shines is in the huge number of measurement points on end user connections all over the world.  Need to understand what the network looks like to users on some ISP in Venezuela?   Atlas probably has a probe, and can tell you that. 

Here we get into an issue of the low hanging fruit being pretty saturated.  For instance, I could plug in a probe at my house, but it would be the third Atlas probe on Comcast in Oakland, California, and wouldn’t really add anything (thus, I have a probe that I’ve been carrying around in my bag for the last few months waiting until I have time to plug it in somewhere more interesting). But there are still a lot of smaller ISPs that don’t have Atlas probes despite having enough end users for measurements to matter, probably because they don’t have any customers who are part of the global network operations community.  It should be possible to get probes installed in a bunch of those, but it would require both available probe hardware and a targeted effort.

My second question is what the constraints are on sending out new probes.  Is there a shortage at the supplier, or is this just something that needs funding?

-Steve


> On Feb 14, 2019, at 11:22 AM, Jared Mauch <jared at puck.nether.net> wrote:
> 
> I think it’s quite easy to get a VM these days as well, so the needs have perhaps changed somewhat.
> 
> I know that hosting a VM anchor is a lot easier now, and people may have an easier time hosting a VM than a probe in some cases.
> 
> - Jared
> 
>> On Feb 14, 2019, at 12:13 PM, James Gannon <james at cyberinvasion.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Hard to get new probes these days.
>> 
>> On 14.02.19, 18:10, "ripe-atlas on behalf of Hank Nussbacher" <ripe-atlas-bounces at ripe.net on behalf of hank at efes.iucc.ac.il> wrote:
>> 
>>   On 12/02/2019 18:22, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
>> 
>>   As I am preparing my presentation I went to the stats page:
>>   https://atlas.ripe.net/results/maps/network-coverage/
>>   and found that even user growth continues upward as well as number of 
>>   anchor probes, the number of actual probes has more or less tapered off 
>>   as of mid-2017 and ends close to 10,000 probes.  Why is that?
>>   Since Nov 2015 when we passed the 9000 probe mark, probe growth is 
>>   negligible.
>>   Why have all these new users (20,000 new uses since Nov 2015!) not added 
>>   probes?
>>   What are we doing wrong to entice users to install probes?
>> 
>>   Regards,
>>   Hank
>> 
>>> I have been invited to a large CS dept in a university to give a 40 
>>> minute intro into
>>> what is RIPE ATLAS, how does it work, how do you get credits, how many 
>>> probes
>>> are there, what is an anchor, where are they located, how does the GUI 
>>> work, what type of measurements
>>> can one do, etc.  Very very introductory - just to whet their 
>>> appetite.  A basic intro to RIPE ATLAS.
>>> So I looked in:
>>> https://atlas.ripe.net/resources/training-and-materials/
>>> and didn't find anything (PS the webinar link is broken).
>>> I am sure there must be some PPT/PDF presentation out there for this.
>>> Pointers?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Hank
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>