Atlas probes in non-production networks
Hi all! I discovered a disturbing practice how RIPE Atlas probes are used by at least one major provider which significantly impacts measurement results and interpretation of these results. I want to share it with you to open discuss about how to deal with such cases. I was doing traceroutes for one of Tier 1 provider which is very well covered by RIPE Atlas probes. I was surprised, that for some probes I got RTTs 100x worse than expected. After verification I discovered that routing for these probes is absurd and contact the provider to explain it. It turned out, that these probes are deployed in this part of their network that provide for some kind of internal service which is not provided for customers of this provider. In other words, these probes don't measure production network, but they measure some kind of hidden experimental network not available for the public. In my private opinion, this practice is against the whole idea of RIPE Atlas, and it is a form of appropriation of the platform for solely private purpose disregarding interest of the RIPE Atlas community. As far I understand, RIPE Atlas supposed to be used to measure public Internet and it was not prepared to be used as internal/private measurement platform. RIPE Atlas probes are not tagged and separated into groups that can be used appropriately for public and internal/private measurements. Therefore, descripted practice creates another uncomfortable situation for RIPE Atlas user because there is no way to tell which probe is deployed in public/production part of the network and which one in the experimental/non-production one. I guess that most of us want to measure production networks and if there is somebody that want to play with experimental stuff then it should be clearly marked as experimental. Please share your thoughts and ideas how to deal with it. Regards, Grzegorz Ponikierski Senior Network Engineer Akamai Technologies AS20940
Hi Grzegorz, While I don't have an immediate response about whether/what RIPE ATLAS should do, I'm curious to know whether there's a simple criterion (e.g., ASN?) to select the probes in question. I'd like to see whether my measurements show any bias for them. I'm asking publicly because others might be interested, but if you don't feel like exposing that in public ("blaming"), I understand! Thanks, Peter On 7/1/24 16:30, Ponikierski, Grzegorz via ripe-atlas wrote:
Hi all!
I discovered a disturbing practice how RIPE Atlas probes are used by at least one major provider which significantly impacts measurement results and interpretation of these results. I want to share it with you to open discuss about how to deal with such cases.
I was doing traceroutes for one of Tier 1 provider which is very well covered by RIPE Atlas probes. I was surprised, that for some probes I got RTTs 100x worse than expected. After verification I discovered that routing for these probes is absurd and contact the provider to explain it. It turned out, that these probes are deployed in this part of their network that provide for some kind of internal service which is not provided for customers of this provider. In other words, these probes don't measure production network, but they measure some kind of hidden experimental network not available for the public.
In my private opinion, this practice is against the whole idea of RIPE Atlas, and it is a form of appropriation of the platform for solely private purpose disregarding interest of the RIPE Atlas community. As far I understand, RIPE Atlas supposed to be used to measure public Internet and it was not prepared to be used as internal/private measurement platform. RIPE Atlas probes are not tagged and separated into groups that can be used appropriately for public and internal/private measurements. Therefore, descripted practice creates another uncomfortable situation for RIPE Atlas user because there is no way to tell which probe is deployed in public/production part of the network and which one in the experimental/non-production one. I guess that most of us want to measure production networks and if there is somebody that want to play with experimental stuff then it should be clearly marked as experimental.
Please share your thoughts and ideas how to deal with it.
Regards,
Grzegorz Ponikierski
Senior Network Engineer
Akamai Technologies
AS20940
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Grzegorz, Are these software of hardware probes? If hardware then the “experiment” they are used in has cost RIPE funds for the hardware. In my opinion that is worse than using SW probes. Regards, Ernst J. Oud Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst J. Oud
On 2 Jul 2024, at 11:38, Ponikierski, Grzegorz via ripe-atlas <ripe-atlas@ripe.net> wrote:
Hi all!
I discovered a disturbing practice how RIPE Atlas probes are used by at least one major provider which significantly impacts measurement results and interpretation of these results. I want to share it with you to open discuss about how to deal with such cases.
I was doing traceroutes for one of Tier 1 provider which is very well covered by RIPE Atlas probes. I was surprised, that for some probes I got RTTs 100x worse than expected. After verification I discovered that routing for these probes is absurd and contact the provider to explain it. It turned out, that these probes are deployed in this part of their network that provide for some kind of internal service which is not provided for customers of this provider. In other words, these probes don't measure production network, but they measure some kind of hidden experimental network not available for the public.
In my private opinion, this practice is against the whole idea of RIPE Atlas, and it is a form of appropriation of the platform for solely private purpose disregarding interest of the RIPE Atlas community. As far I understand, RIPE Atlas supposed to be used to measure public Internet and it was not prepared to be used as internal/private measurement platform. RIPE Atlas probes are not tagged and separated into groups that can be used appropriately for public and internal/private measurements. Therefore, descripted practice creates another uncomfortable situation for RIPE Atlas user because there is no way to tell which probe is deployed in public/production part of the network and which one in the experimental/non-production one. I guess that most of us want to measure production networks and if there is somebody that want to play with experimental stuff then it should be clearly marked as experimental.
Please share your thoughts and ideas how to deal with it.
Regards, Grzegorz Ponikierski Senior Network Engineer Akamai Technologies AS20940 -- ripe-atlas mailing list ripe-atlas@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-atlas
Which ASN does this relate to ? Colin Sent from my iPod
On 2 Jul 2024, at 11:13, Ernst J. Oud <ernstoud@gmail.com> wrote:
Grzegorz,
Are these software of hardware probes? If hardware then the “experiment” they are used in has cost RIPE funds for the hardware. In my opinion that is worse than using SW probes.
Regards,
Ernst J. Oud
Met vriendelijke groet,
Ernst J. Oud
On 2 Jul 2024, at 11:38, Ponikierski, Grzegorz via ripe-atlas <ripe-atlas@ripe.net> wrote:
Hi all!
I discovered a disturbing practice how RIPE Atlas probes are used by at least one major provider which significantly impacts measurement results and interpretation of these results. I want to share it with you to open discuss about how to deal with such cases.
I was doing traceroutes for one of Tier 1 provider which is very well covered by RIPE Atlas probes. I was surprised, that for some probes I got RTTs 100x worse than expected. After verification I discovered that routing for these probes is absurd and contact the provider to explain it. It turned out, that these probes are deployed in this part of their network that provide for some kind of internal service which is not provided for customers of this provider. In other words, these probes don't measure production network, but they measure some kind of hidden experimental network not available for the public.
In my private opinion, this practice is against the whole idea of RIPE Atlas, and it is a form of appropriation of the platform for solely private purpose disregarding interest of the RIPE Atlas community. As far I understand, RIPE Atlas supposed to be used to measure public Internet and it was not prepared to be used as internal/private measurement platform. RIPE Atlas probes are not tagged and separated into groups that can be used appropriately for public and internal/private measurements. Therefore, descripted practice creates another uncomfortable situation for RIPE Atlas user because there is no way to tell which probe is deployed in public/production part of the network and which one in the experimental/non-production one. I guess that most of us want to measure production networks and if there is somebody that want to play with experimental stuff then it should be clearly marked as experimental.
Please share your thoughts and ideas how to deal with it.
Regards, Grzegorz Ponikierski Senior Network Engineer Akamai Technologies AS20940 -- ripe-atlas mailing list ripe-atlas@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-atlas -- ripe-atlas mailing list ripe-atlas@ripe.net https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-atlas
On Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 02:30:13PM +0000, Ponikierski, Grzegorz via ripe-atlas <ripe-atlas@ripe.net> wrote a message of 149 lines which said:
RIPE Atlas probes are not tagged and separated into groups that can be used appropriately for public and internal/private measurements.
This is not enirely true, RIPE Atlas probes are tagged, you can ask measurements by including or excluding some tags, and, if (I did not check) the host tagged them with something like "internalnetwork", it solves partially this issue.
Therefore, descripted practice creates another uncomfortable situation for RIPE Atlas user because there is no way to tell which probe is deployed in public/production part of the network and which one in the experimental/non-production one.
Can you give the ID of some of these probes so we can check if they have at least a tag?
participants (5)
-
Colin Johnston -
Ernst J. Oud -
Peter Thomassen -
Ponikierski, Grzegorz -
Stephane Bortzmeyer