RIPE Atlas

RIPE Atlas is a global, open, distributed Internet measurement platform, consisting of thousands of measurement devices that measure Internet connectivity in real time.

History

RIPE Atlas was established in 2010 by the RIPE Network Coordination Centre. As of November 2015, it was composed of nearly 9,000 probes and 150 anchors around the world.

Technical details

• Measurement types: The measurement devices (probes and anchors) perform IPv4 and IPv6 traceroute, ping, DNS, NTP and other measurements.
• Device types:
  • Versions 1 and 2 of the probe: Lantronix XPort Pro ^[1]
  • Version 3 probe: modified TP-Link wireless router (model TL-MR 3020)^[2]
  • RIPE Atlas anchor: Soekris Net6501-70 board in the 1U 19-inch rack-mounted case with additional SSD
• The back-end architecture was described in detail in the September 2015 edition of the Internet Protocol Journal ^[3]

Community

Anyone can volunteer to host a RIPE Atlas probe.^[4] Probes are free of charge, low maintenance, and can be plugged in behind a home router or in a data center.

Organisations that want additional RIPE Atlas measurements targeting their network can host a RIPE Atlas anchor.^[5]

Tools for visualizing and analyzing RIPE Atlas measurement data are used by network operators for troubleshooting and network monitoring.^[6]

Open source software tools, written by RIPE Atlas users, are available in the repository for community contributions on GitHub.^[7]

Several hundred individuals also support RIPE Atlas as "ambassadors" by promoting participation and distributing probes. Organizations also support RIPE Atlas as sponsors.^[8]

Multiple hackerspaces have installed RIPE Atlas probes and have their own project about displaying the probes presence.^[9]

Research papers

All the data collected by RIPE Atlas is open data and is made publicly available to users and the wider Internet community.

A selection of published papers using RIPE Atlas data include:

• Dynamic Traceroute Visualization at Multiple Abstraction Levels^[10]
• Network Interference Detection ^[11]
• Internet Performance Measurement Platforms ^[12]
• Visualization and Monitoring for the Identification and Analysis of DNS Issues^[13]
• Investigating Interdomain Routing Policies ^[14]
• Mapping Peering Interconnections ^[15]
• Generating Function For Network Delay ^[16]
• Lessons Learned From Using the RIPE Atlas Platform for Measurement Research ^[17]
• Quantifying Interference between Measurements on the RIPE Atlas Platform ^[18]

Similar projects

• PlanetLab
• M-Lab
• PerfSONAR

References

1. "XPort Pro - World's Smallest Linux Networking Server - Lantronix". lantronix.com. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
2. "Portable 3G/4G Wireless N Router TL-MR3020 - Welcome to TP-LINK". tp-link.com. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
3. "RIPE Atlas: A Global Internet Measurement Network" (PDF). Internet Protocol Journal. 18 (3). September 2015. ISSN 1944-1134.
4. "RIPE Atlas Info - RIPE Atlas — RIPE Network Coordination Centre". atlas.ripe.net. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
5. "Become a RIPE Atlas Anchor Host - RIPE Atlas — RIPE Network Coordination Centre". atlas.ripe.net. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
6. "RIPE Atlas: User Views and Use Cases — RIPE Labs". labs.ripe.net. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
7. "RIPE-Atlas-Community/ripe-atlas-community-contrib · GitHub". github.com. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
8. "Community - RIPE Atlas — RIPE Network Coordination Centre". atlas.ripe.net. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
9. {https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/RIPE_Atlas}
10. Candela, Massimo; Di Bartolomeo, Marco; Di Battista, Giuseppe; Squarcella, Claudio (2013). Stephen Wismath and Alexander Wolff, ed. "Dynamic Traceroute Visualization at Multiple Abstraction Levels". Proc. 21st International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD '13). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 8242. pp. 500–511. cdds-dtvmal-13.
11. Anderson, Collin; Winter, Philipp (2014). "Global Network Interference Detection Over the RIPE Atlas Network". 4th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI 14). USENIX.
12. Bajpai, V.; Schonwalder, J. (2015). "A Survey on Internet Performance Measurement Platforms and Related Standardization Efforts". Communications Surveys & Tutorials. IEEE. 17 (3): 1313–1341. doi:10.1109/COMST.2015.2418435.
13. Amin, Christopher; Candela, Massimo; Karrenberg, Daniel; Kisteleki, Robert; Strikos, Andreas (2015). "Visualization and Monitoring for the Identification and Analysis of DNS Issues". Proc. 10th International Conference on Internet Monitoring and Protection (ICIMP 2015), Brussels. ISBN 978-1-61208-413-8.
14. Anwar, Ruwaifa; Niaz, Haseeb; Choffnes, David; Cunha, Ítalo; Gill, Phillipa; Katz-Bassett, Ethan (October 2015). "Investigating Interdomain Routing Policies in the Wild" (PDF). Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Internet Measurement Conference - IMC '15: 71. doi:10.1145/2815675.2815712. ISBN 9781450338486.
15. Giotsas, Vasileios; Smaragdakis, Georgios; Huffaker, Bradley; Luckie, Matthew; kc, claffy (2015). "Mapping Peering Interconnections to a Facility" (PDF). CoNEXT '15 December 01–04, 2015, Heidelberg, Germany. ACM. doi:10.1145/2716281.2836122 (inactive 2015-11-04). ISBN 978-1-4503-3412-9.
16. "Generating Function For Network Delay". arXiv:1003.0190.
17. Bajpai, Vaibhav; Eravuchira, Steffie Jacob; Schönwälder, Jürgen (2015-07-01). "Lessons Learned From Using the RIPE Atlas Platform for Measurement Research". SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 45 (3): 35–42. doi:10.1145/2805789.2805796. ISSN 0146-4833.
18. Holterbach, Thomas; Pelsser, Cristel; Bush, Randy; Vanbever, Laurent (2015-01-01). "Quantifying Interference Between Measurements on the RIPE Atlas Platform". Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Internet Measurement Conference. IMC '15. New York, NY, USA: ACM: 437–443. doi:10.1145/2815675.2815710. ISBN 978-1-4503-3848-6.

External links

• RIPE Atlas home page
• RIPE Labs blog articles about RIPE Atlas
• GitHub repository for RIPE Atlas community contributed software