Dear all, 

Thank you for providing your feedback to the list. We follow the discussions and with great interest and this is a known issue that we are well aware of at the RIPE NCC. There seems to me to be several issues ambassadors are facing here:

 1.     People don’t plug in their probes after getting one from an ambassador

 2.     Host experiences probe USB failure

 3.     Hosts lose interest sometimes

 4.     The RIPE NCC policy that probes needs to be at least 50% active 

Issue 1: I see a good suggestion from Ricardo to create a telegram (or any other major messenger group) group. Do most of you take this to be a feasible option? In a way, it helps people get connected and to get the kind of assistance they need from the group – specifically on how they use/troubleshoot RIPE Atlas. It can be in the local language. Of course there will be advantages and disadvantages in this.

Issue 2: For this, a few months ago we upgraded the software to reduce the risk of failure (see: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/philip_homburg/troubleshooting-ripe-atlas-probes-usb-sticks). Further, for the next generation of probe, we will not rely on USB at all anymore, so that will at least solve the USB issue.

Issue 3: Any ideas on how to tackle this? We can kindly ask hosts who have lost interest to post their probes back to the RIPE NCC. Only when you think it is appropriate, as culture difference may occur here. Other than that, there is not much we can do.

Issue 4: We think this policy is reasonable, and yet we do understand the concern. If you think it should be different, we’d appreciate any constructive feedback.

All the best,
_________
Lia Hestina
RIPE NCC
+31 20 535 4385
lhestina@ripe.net
Available on: 
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday


On 5 Apr 2018, at 16:42, <r.deoliveiraschmidt@utwente.nl> <r.deoliveiraschmidt@utwente.nl> wrote:

I believe this is a problem everywhere to everyone.

Same happens to me, although I haven’t distributed too many probes so far, from those that I did, a small fraction is connected.

Even those that I sent to people close to me, professors that lead research groups that work on Internet, computer network, measurement related problems… never saw the probes connected. Perhaps more sad is to see these groups publishing papers that somehow use RIPE Atlas or other RIPE tools :-(

That’s somehow a social engineering problem. My feeling is that this is a problem we cannot really overcome by carefully choosing who we send probes to. If we end up distributing the probes only to those very close to us, that work in “perfect” network environments, we will never be able to have at least few “eyes” on those uncharted networks where “ordinary” people are — like the probe in my parents home :-)

-Ricardo


On Apr 5, 2018, at 11:35, Budiwijaya <bbuuddiiww@gmail.com> wrote:

I guess it's all the same problem around the world. Same here in Indonesia.

For me, everytime I handed over a probe, usually I ask them to fill
google form. just basic contacts and name.
Some are still offline after 2 year handoff. Try contact them, no response.
Some are they already switch jobs.

Sometimes if I beg them to send it back to me if they not gonna plug
it in, so I can distribute it elsewhere, they just ignore.


On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 6:48 AM, Philip Paeps <philip@trouble.is> wrote:
I had a conversation with a new probe host who was wondering how many of the
probes I hand out "walk off" never to be seen again.

Sadly, that's quite a lot of them in my case.  I guess I need to find
conferences with more reliable attendees?

People promise to plug them in but then they get distracted.  Or they move
and the probes end up in boxes.

How do other ambassadors twist their hosts' arms into actually plugging in
probes?  (And keeping them plugged in!)

Philip

--
Philip Paeps
Senior Reality Engineer
Ministry of Information

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