[atlas] [HTTP measurements] What is the use of query_string?

Hello,

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 2:04 PM Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 11:32:50AM +0200,
>  Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> wrote
>  a message of 10 lines which said:
>
> > The documentation says that you can add a "query_string" parameter in
> > a HTTP measurement but the anchor seems to ignore it?

The anchors' HTTP service is described here:
https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/howtos/anchors.html#ripe-atlas-anchor-services
- basically agreeing with you, it ignores query parameters.

> A colleague suggests that it can be useful to disable caching if the
> poor probe is locked behing a transparent HTTP proxy with caching.
>
> {'is_oneoff': True, 'definitions': [{'description': 'HTTP GET to fr-par-as2486.anchors.atlas.ripe.net', 'af': 6, 'type': 'http', 'target': 'fr-par-as2486.anchors.atlas.ripe.net', 'method': 'GET', 'path': '/', 'query_string': 'disablecaching=123456789', 'https': False, 'more_extended_timing': True}], 'probes': [{'requested': 1, 'type': 'area', 'value': 'WW', 'tags': {'include': ['system-ipv6-works']}}]}

It is hard to judge a particular HTTP proxy's behaviour, but indeed
adding some variance to the URL via the query string likely helps
here.

Regards,
Robert

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