Dear all, In response to community feedback, as well as to the observed behaviour of RIPE Atlas, earlier we put out some proposals about some aspects of future behaviour of RIPE Atlas. We’d like to summarise what we’ve heard so far (written responses as well as verbal discussions we participated in), and the path we plan to take based on these.
Probe farming: There were many voices who agreed with some form of limiting this behaviour. We were also asked to reach out to users who are using many probes this way now. We did and the short summary is that most (but not all) answers give reasonable justification. Conclusion: we’ll add the relatively simple proposed rules (in short: limit the number of software probes from the same IP/prefix). Later on we can consider softer approaches, e.g. reducing the number of credits given to hosts with excess probes or using probe similarity metrics. Measurement aggregators: We proposed to embrace this existing phenomenon, ask these users to in the future give the system an indication about the distinct clients they serve, and perhaps step up as sponsors in such cases. We received many responses to this proposal. For the most part, current aggregators who responded stated that they have no significant issues with providing such client information – in an anonymised way of course. At the same time some of them stated that adding a “mandatory sponsorship” would discourage them from using RIPE Atlas in the future. Some argued that by having enough credits to do so, they were in fact contributing positively to the network already, and in fact some of them are or were sponsors. Conclusion: we’ll add the features needed to implement such aggregations, and work on incentives for these users to become RIPE Atlas sponsors. We’ll also add the need for proper attribution to the service, similar to what the commercial use policy describes. We may also look at additional requirements to ensure proper funding for our membership services. Data retention principles: This proposal was a high level one and we received limited feedback. One discussion raised how “financially sustainable” is defined; perhaps the best summary of this is the recent RIPE Labs article published by our CTO Felipe: https://labs.ripe.net/author/felipe_victolla_silveira/reducing-the-ripe-nccs-data-centre-footprint/ Conclusion: we are implementing our data storage and access features along the principles we laid out. For transparency, we’ll also include summaries of proposals we put out earlier (see: https://labs.ripe.net/author/kistel/five-proposals-for-a-better-ripe-atlas/), for which we haven’t provided a written conclusion. Remove per-hop “late” packets from traceroute [LATE-PACKETS]: we only heard support for this, therefore it’s in our plans now. Measure well-known CDNs [CDN-HTTP]: Multiple responses argued that by selecting a “short list” of CDNs that are included by default, there’s an implicit statement and/or bias in the system towards bigger providers, contributing to some aspects of centralisation. Others pointed out that this approach reflects the reality of generic users, since the majority of the content they consume is provided by said CDNs. In addition, there were some voices supporting this proposal because of the value it provides to (smaller) CDNs or because it incentivises probe hosts to join or to keep their probes connected. Based on these discussions we’ll not go ahead with a full set of CDN measurements; however we’ll try a smaller scale experiment to discover the potential benefits to all users. Generic HTTP measurements [GENERIC-HTTP]: the discussions centered around some reiterations of the previous arguments (i.e. the safety of both the probe host and the providers’ sides) and if/how the proposed opt-in activity of the probe host would help this. Given these arguments, and that only a few voices expressed their explicit support for this, we’ll put this activity on hold; we can revisit this if/when the community wishes so. Add support for STARTTLS measurements [STARTTLS]: there were lengthy discussions about how certain SMTP servers may react to such incoming measurements. The general agreement was that this measurement type can be useful, with the confirmation that these checks will explicitly stop after STARTTLS (i.e. they will not have the ability to even try initiating sending mails or such). Remove support for non-public measurements [ONLY-PUBLIC]: the discussion raised both arguments for and against changing the system’s behaviour. Some people also raised the possibility of making private measurements more costly (in terms of credits). We’d also like to note the reference to the data retention principles (private measurement results are not available to all users, therefore we’ll only store them for a limited time). All in all, for the time being we do not plan to make behavioural changes about this feature. Regards, Robert Kisteleki RIPE NCC -- ripe-atlas mailing list ripe-atlas@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-atlas
