Dear Hank, Many thanks for your comments and questions. The RIPE Atlas sponsorship programme has been established since the beginning of the project back in 2011. We need the support of the RIPE Atlas community to make the project successful and benefit all users, not just our members. This is the reason that we are aiming to shift some of the costs from the membership to the community. The cost of an active probe is not only the hardware, but also the collection, storage and processing of data measured by the probe - which are operating costs covered by the RIPE NCC. The figures in the 2021 budget for RIPE Atlas cover the overall cost of running the network. We also budget for a bare minimum of hardware probes to maintain the network and deal with the natural decay of probes over time. Up until this point, we have not promoted the benefits that potential sponsors receive by sponsoring RIPE Atlas. With the introduction of this new model, we are laying out all the benefits and have added several new incentives to make the packages more attractive. Regarding your suggestion to source all these costs via next year’s budget, we are happy to hear from members if they want us to do so and take it from there. You can also raise this when we publish our 2022 Activity Plan and Budget ahead of RIPE 83. Kind regards, Lia _________ Lia Hestina RIPE NCC

On 7 Oct 2021, at 09:22, Hank Nussbacher <hank@interall.co.il> wrote:

On 06/10/2021 11:04, Lia Hestina wrote:

...

Dear colleagues, Today we launch our new RIPE Atlas sponsorship model, offering more benefits and exposure to our future sponsors. Thanks to the contributions we've received so far, we've been able to keep distributing hardware probes free of charge all over the world, with each new probe helping make RIPE Atlas a more useful tool for measuring and monitoring the state of the Internet. Read our story on RIPE Labs: https://labs.ripe.net/author/lia_hestina/help-build-a-bigger-better-ripe-atl... We're now asking you to help us expand the RIPE Atlas network further still. Even the smallest contribution from you will keep our vibrant community going so we can carry on making the Internet a more stable place for all. Check what our new sponsorship opportunities have to offer: https://atlas.ripe.net/get-involved/become-a-sponsor/ Kind regards, Lia Hestina On behalf of the RIPE Atlas team _________ RIPE NCC

I am a bit confused: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-750 Based on the 2021 budget (above) ATLAS has 130KEuro in Capex. How much does it cost RIPE to make and distribute 1000 hardware probes? Based on the sponsorship page it costs about 100Euro per probe (100000Euro funds 1000 probes) which seems to be a bit excessive.

Also, why couldn't the RIPE NCC decide to allocate 500KEuro in 2022 for exactly this purpose? If added to the budget - let the membership decide.

Regards, Hank