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Ärende: FidoNews 29:08 [02/05]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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           Measuring the InterNet, The RIPE Atlas project.
           By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555


Last week I wrote about the Samknows project, this week's article is
about the other project I am involved in that attempts to chart the
InterNet: the RIPE Atlas project.

It works by installing a piece of dedicated hardware called a "probe"
in user's homes or other "InterNet end points".

It is called the Atlas project because the idea is to present the
functionality of the InterNet in a series of maps. An atlas is a
collection of maps. You can see some of these maps at
http://atlas.ripe.net. On the main map you will see the location of
the probes. My probe is #2462 and you can find it by zooming in on the
centre of The Netherlands. It is located about 15 km south-east of the
city of Utrecht. Clicking on the green triangle will reveal some
details. Well, it may be a red triangle. Occasionally the probe goes
down for a short period and the maps are a bit slow to update. It can
take over half a day.

If you want to see more maps, click on the "maps" button on the select
bar on the top right of the article.

The probe is a remarkable gadget. When I requested my probe, I
expected a parcel. What I got was ... a letter. It is so small that it
fits in a standard A5 bubble foil lined envelope. It measures 21x22x43
mm. I suspect it is the RJ45 receptacle for the ethernet port that
sets the lower limit in size. Here are some pictures:

http://tinyurl.com/7q49662
http://tinyurl.com/7gdvlzz

The probe is powered via a USB connector. No data goes over the USB
port, just power. Plug it into a spare USB port on a nearby device
that runs 24/7 without sleep mode, or use a dedicated USB power
adapter. Hook up the ethernet port to a spare port anywhere on the
LAN. The LAN must be configured to supply IPv4 addresses by DHCP and
if IPv6 is available to provide Router Advertisements to allow devices
to obtain an IPv6 address by stateless auto configuration.

Yes, you got that right, the probe can do IPv6! This tiny gadget gets
a globally unique IPv6 address all of its own. The internet of things
is here! If you have an IPv6 connection you can ping6 it at
p2462.probes.atlas.ripe.net or if that does not work at
atlas.vlist.eu.

When the probe is hooked up, it is evidently a busy beaver. The busy
light does not go off for more than 20 seconds in a row. I haven't
noticed any reduction in bandwidth though. As far as I can see, it
just does pings and traceroutes, so it does not take much bandwidth.
Where the Samknows whitebox only measures ever hour and is focussed on
the last-mile broadband speeds, the Atlas probe is focussed on the
Internet as a whole. It pings and traceroutes the root servers and
some other places. In Ipv4 and in IPv6 when available.

I have already discovered some interesting things. Such as that the I
root server is not pingeable in IPv4 from my location. It pings fine
in IPv6, but not in IPv4.  No idea why, but it is very noticeable.
Could this be collateral damage from the Pirate Bay block that my
provider was forced to deploy? I can only guess. Another thing is that
my IPv6 tunnel apparently went down for a couple of hours between
Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Something I would never have
noticed otherwise.

This is really a very interesting project.

So how can you join? You can join by applying for a RIPE Atlas probe.
http://atlas.ripe.net/pre-register/ You will be asked to agree to the
conditions, which basically come down to you promising not to tamper
with the probe and to keep it running 24/7. The first may be tempting,
the latter should not be a problem for a FidoNet sysop. We are used to
having things run 24/7.

"What's in it for me" you may ask. I can tell you what is in it for
me. First I get access to some interesting data. Not only the test
results of my own probe are accessible, I can also see the test
results of those that have chosen to make their probe's test results
visible to other participants of the programme. This is an option that
by default is off. Not many - only 50 out of a total 1300 active
probes - have chosen to do so, but the results are interesting
nevertheless.

Also, having the probe was an incentive for me to delve into the IPv6
firewall of my WRT54GL+OpenWrt main router. By default the IPv6
firewall rejects all unsolicited incoming IPv6 packets. As it should.
Making a little hole in it to allow pinging the probe from outside
without bringing it down altogether was quit a challenge. The OpenWrt
wiki was not helpful, to use an understatement. But I figured it out
and so now I also know how to configure it to pass packets destined
for my yet to install IPv6 Binkp server.

Thanks to Steven Leeman for drawing my attention to this project. You
can see his probe #2497 on the main map near Roeselare, between Brugge
and Kortrijk in Belgium.


© Michiel van der Vlist, all rights reserved.
Permission to publish in the FIDONEWS file echo and the FIDONEWS
discussion echo as originating from 2:2/2

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