Hosting a RIPE Atlas probe on your network

Have you heard about Ripe Atlas project ?
RIPE Atlas
RIPE NCC is running an excellent project called RIPE Atlas from few years. This is one of the largest distributed network measurement projects where thousands of users host small devices called RIPE Atlas Probes on their networks, home connections, data centers etc. These probes do measurement under both public and private category and make that data available publicly for use by network engineers and helps in optimising routing.

These can help other users to run ping, trace route etc from other networks to detect latency, routing issues.

I have been hosting few of these and wanted to check with other users in India if they can host some devices.
It does not have any major requirements and just need USB power, uses 4-5kbps internet for tests and be available online 24/7.

I have 2 devices which I can share at this time.

To setup new device will need your email(invite and account for accessing online tools) and ISP details(ASN) to set it up.

Some more explaining how Ripe Atlas works and can help Network users/teams
RIPE Atlas - Wikipedia
RIPE ATLAS and Benefits of Hosting it in your Indian ISP Network | Mumbai IX Blogs
RIPE Atlas Probe Stats
RIPE Atlas Measurements
 
Got my atlas probe today.
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Registered and connected the probe to the network. It appears to be a NanoPi NEO Plus2 hardware underneath - NanoPi NEO Plus2
I connected the device to my AP which had an available ethernet port, and used the USB port on the AP itself for power.

Immediately after connecting, it showed up in the Ripe Atlas portal.

Screenshot 2020-03-07 at 10.24.06 PM.webp
 


@Realme Before I answer your security concern, allow me to explain what the probes do - The probes (hardware/software) run measurements (traceroute, dns, ping etc) which are classified into two,

1. Built-in measurements which the probe software runs periodically and send the results/output to the RIPE NCC RIPE Atlas servers. As an example, one of the built-in is ping to the root servers.

2. User defined measurements (UDM) - Anyone having credits (if you host a probe, you earn credits - consider this as reward/incentive to keep your probe running all the time) can run measurements on the probes. For example, if I wanted to know whether people using ACT are able to reach my server, I can run a measurement and select the probes hosted on ACT network.

For more details, see the FAQ on Security and Privacy.

To answer the second part of your question, the only cost is power to the probe (if it's a hardware probe) and a few Kb/s of bandwidth.

Hope this helps.
 

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