On 2013.11.06. 18:33, Mike Hughes wrote:
On 6 November 2013 15:56, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com <mailto:randy@psg.com>> wrote:
> To ensure that RIPE Atlas is not used (intentionally or not) as a > distributed attack system we could consider: > - limiting # of probes simultaneously running such measurements to a > low number. > - requiring explicit permission of the probe owner to run such UDM.
this seems prudent, though i worry that the last point does not scale well.
Thinking about how we could make this last point scale better...
I can see there are situations where some probe owners just wouldn't want to get involved in such measurements at all, and cases where a receptive probe owner may have probes in many different networks (on which they have varying levels of privilege), and therefore while wanting to take part may need probe-by probe granularity to ensure that they don't, for instance, break a customer's network.
Probe owners could be given an option to opt-out on an account-wide basis, or opt-in some or all of their probes, but this doesn't automatically mean they consent to every "special" measurement, just that they will consider requests for consent.
With these kind of things it's generally better to use an opt-in approach. At the moment we don't have good statistics about how many of our users (hosts) would read such a call for participation, let alone how many would be willing to opt in. However, we are working on a few bits and pieces that will let hosts describe their probe/installation better (for example marking probes as "home vs backbone", connection type, nat/no-nat etc. -- see the mail thread on the Atlas mailing list). This could be a good indicator about how many hosts we can mobilise for such a call. Regards, Robert