[atlas] Why has probe growth stagnated?

On 01/03/2019 16:14, Robert Kisteleki wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 2019-02-20 09:36, Gert Doering wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 06:52:28AM +0200, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
>>> On Tue, 19 Feb 2019, scg at gibbard.org wrote:
>>>
>>> ASN coverage is just 5.6%.  That really doesn't give a complete global
>>> view for stats.  Rather than return money to LIRs every year in their
>>> bill, why not state that any LIR running an active probe within their ASN
>>> will get a 50Euro credit on their bill?  That alone would increase ASN
>>> footprint coverage quickly within RIPE.
>> I like that suggestion :-)
>>
>> (Not sure how that will pan out if we reach 50% of all LIRs, but to get
>> from 5% to 20%, it might definitely be an idea)
> Interesting idea indeed!
>
> Let me try to address a few points that were mentioned before, perhaps
> by providing some background information along the way.
>
> The growth rate is indeed slower than in the early days. As with
> everything, there's no single reason for this. On one hand we had
> shortage of hardware probes (which is hopefully solved for the moment,
> see:
> https://labs.ripe.net/Members/alun_davies/new-ripe-atlas-version-4-probes/document_view_resolve).
> On the other hand, it's harder to reach "uncovered" networks and as
> someone mentioned before, the "the low hanging fruit being pretty
> saturated".
>
> We measure ASN coverage compared to all ASN-s that announce anything at
> all, so depending on how hard one wants to argue for having a probe "in
> every AS", this may or may not need improvement. We're certainly
> encouraging all our ambassadors and prospective hosts to deploy probes
> where we don't have them yet. The current application process has a
> built-in preference for new networks.
>
> For a few years now the procurement of new probes is funded exclusively
> by sponsors. Therefore we'd be very happy to see more sponsors stepping up.
>
> Finally: the public graph about the number of users shows the total we
> have so far (meaning users who interacted with RIPE Atlas while they
> were logged in via RIPE Access). We can, if this is deemed useful, track
> the number of recent users too (for some definition of recent).
>
> Regards,
> Robert
>
And what about the idea to encourage greater ASN coverage by providing a 
discount on LIR
membership for those who have at least one active ASN probe in their ASN?
Regards,
Hank