Hello,
In this case, why not have the software probes set up with a fall-back RIPE Atlas Anchor (controller)?
It's worth mentioning that a probe not being able to connect to its assigned controller is the exceptional status, not the general rule. Probes quite happily continue to measure and store results for later delivery even if they are disconnected from the infrastructure. Obviously they cannot receive new measurement requests while they are disconnected. The complexity of handling the exceptional case is a high price to pay considering that 1) the controlling infrastructure is partially hosted at the RIPE NCC, partially at hosting providers, with enough 9s of uptime, and 2) disconnects are basically always partial (ie. always affect a subset of the probes) On the flip side, there are a number of benefits of making the probes stick to the same controller as long as possible. Therefore we defined a time interval (2 hours) in which the probes will keep on trying to reconnect to the same server, and only ask for help if that doesn't work out. I hope this explains the behaviour. Cheers, Robert