[atlas] Proposal: Remove support for non-public measurements [ONLY-PUBLIC]

I agree with Gert (and Daniel), in whatever way continuing private 
measurements can be retained.

The RIPE-Atlas project and infrastructure is a significant benefit to 
network operators, as well as to the researchers (and the Internet as a 
whole). The points Gert mentions are valid and demonstrate a significant 
operator use case.

In addition to what Robert mentioned in the article, with the increasing 
use of 'edge connectivity', CDN, and anycast, operators need to test 
against the IP-unicast foundation of services - something they do not 
necessarily want 'the Internet' to know about, and something they 
certainly don't want black-hats to target with DDoS. Being able to run 
measurements against 'hidden IP addresses' to validate connectivity (for 
an Internet-facing service) in this way, and being fairly confident that 
measurements aren't highlighted in public data can be important.

Might it be possible to reassess the current method of filtering 
non-public measurements, to perhaps simplify?

Thanks

Ivan

On 16/12/2022 21:39, Daniel Suchy via ripe-atlas wrote:
> Hello,
> I support Gert here, network operators (LIRs) can have valid reasons to 
> make some their measurements non-public. So I don't support removal of 
> this feature. It's a bad idea...
> 
> If some probe host has problem with that, why don't mark such probes as 
> not-available for private measurements (this can be implemented easily)? 
> And I think there will be only minority of probes marked like that. 
> Majority of hosts will not care at all...
> 
> And keep in mind that Atlas is funded by LIRs and their money. All the 
> big-data infrastructure (and also making of hardware probes) costs real 
> (and not small) money. Existence of rivate measurements might be one 
> reason, why LIRs allow spending money for this useful project. Probe 
> hosting is only small piece in expenses within this project...
> 
> - Daniel
> 
> On 12/16/22 19:13, Gert Doering wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 10:41:42AM -0800, Steve Gibbard wrote:
>>> Atlas, and the RIPE NCC, have two fairly separate constituencies:  
>>> researchers and operators.
>>
>> This.
>>
>> Operators (like me) are willing to host Atlas anchors and probes, and
>> thus contribute to the system.
>>
>> I might be troubleshooting something in our network where I have no
>> interest in making the results public.  So I value the option to have
>> non-public measurements.
>>
>> There's no "right to see all measurements" here - if someone wants to
>> see something, they are free to run their own measurements with their
>> own credits.  What I do with my credits (which do not come for free)
>> and who can see the results should be my decision.
>>
>> Gert Doering
>>          -- NetMaster
>>
>>
> 

-- 
Ivan Beveridge <ivan.beveridge at dreamtime.org>