Dear Doc, Encouraging people has been a common problem. Here goes the the troubleshooting page: https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/troubleshoot-probe-issues/ I hope you've CC'ed that to the group. Luai E Hasnawi wrote:

Hi everyone, Regarding probes failures, the procedure to fix it is been discussed earlier (I can not find the procedure to fix it). However, I do agree with you all regarding friends not connecting their probes. I thought about sending them the Probes YouTube video that describes the benefit of the probes but the video is not that interesting. And when I follow up with my friends about the status of their probes that all have the same answer (come and pick it up ). I am really glad that we are discussing this issue. Thank you Philip Regards Dr. Hasnawi On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 11:27 AM, M. Tajbakhsh <tajbakhsh@shirazu.ac.ir> wrote:

...

Same here.

Unfortunately "more than half of probes failed" means you won't get new probes as an ambassador, according to the distribution policy of Atlas. Experience shows that some probes CANNOT be fixed following the troubleshooting procedures along with using new USB sticks, even on UPS power and backup internet links. Keeping them running is trickier than it seemed and we can't push our hosts to that extent all the time. That's why number of active probes barely exceeds 10k, despite the fact so many of them given out (around 40k I guess), plus efforts & resources put to keep them up & running all these years.

Good developers of Atlas must seriously consider reviewing codes and algorithms, especially on the probe side of the deal (e.g. by limiting number of read/writes over memory sticks by mem cache & better utilization of online connection whenever possible, etc)

Jonathan Brewer wrote:

...

With so many failures due to USB issues, it’s hard to accurately assign blame for distributed probes that never come online.

To get the 40+ probes I distributed in the Pacific Islands online I sent hosts USB chargers, called and emailed, and reminded until they were plugged in - but then more than half failed. On Sat, 31 Mar 2018 at 12:48, 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

​Regards, M. Tajbakhsh Lecturer, Advisor, Network & Security Expert.