Hi, all. I am a computer networks PhD student analyzing RIPE anchoring measurements for research purposes. While I was looking at traceroutes originating from specific anchors, I noticed that all traceroutes from Anchor #7106 only contained one hop, with no silent hops present. Upon further inspection, these singleton hops were actually the destination IP addresses themselves, and they had extremely short (<1ms) RTTs from 7106 even when they were supposed to be located on the other side of the globe. On the other hand, ping and traceroute measurements directed toward 7106 all seemed normal, with regular hop counts and RTTs that seemed to agree with reported geographical distance.

I strongly suspect that 7106 is connected to a local proxy that is responding to outgoing ping and traceroute traffic on behalf of its intended destinations. As such, I wanted to bring some attention to this anchor so that other researchers might be aware of its status before trying to use it to conduct measurements. 

Regards,

William Kanieski