Using RIPE Atlas API for measuring IPv6 Reachability


by Vesna Manojlovic - BECHA

Cooperation and sharing are the keywords for this talk -- sharing of data, of efforts, or results.

RIPE Atlas is a global network of probes that measure Internet connectivity and reachability. Out of 6500 active probes, more then 2000 support IPv6. Supported measurements are ping, traceroute6, DNS and SSL. There are API calls for starting your own measurements, and for downloading results of "built-in" measurements from all probes towards root nameservers. Code for analysing data is shared on GitHub.

Many analysis papers and articles were already published using RIPE Atlas data.

My goal is to encourage FOSDEM participants to contribute with their knowledge and their curiosity, by using the existing data and producing interesting research, and by sharing their code with others.

Full text:

RIPE Atlas is a global network of probes that measure Internet connectivity and reachability, providing an unprecedented understanding of the state of the Internet in real time.

There are currently several thousand active probes in the RIPE Atlas network, concentrated in the RIPE NCC service region of Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, and the network is constantly growing. Probes are hosted by volunteers, individuals and organisations, who share a portion of their bandwidth and electricity, and allow all the other RIPE Atlas hosts to perform the measurements from their probe, thus contributing to the wealth of measurement data. RIPE Atlas users who host a probe can also use the entire RIPE Atlas network to conduct customised measurements that provide valuable data about their own network(s).

The RIPE NCC collects the data from this network and provides useful maps and graphs based on the aggregated results.

IPv6 is a popular topic for the research community, and there are many articles published already based on RIPE Atlas IPv6 data.

In my presentation, I will make an introduction to RIPE Atlas measurements, explain various IPv6-related features, point to the existing research and code, and invite participants to contribute their own.

IPv6:

https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/world-ipv6-launch-ripe-atlas-use-cases
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/stephane_bortzmeyer/how-many-atlas-probes-believe-they-have-ipv6-but-are-wrong
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/ripe-atlas-case-study-of-aaaa-filtering
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/ripe-atlas-a-case-study-of-ipv6-48-filtering
Measurements source code is public
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/philip_homburg/ripe-atlas-measurements-source-code
REST APIs for performing and analysing measurements are provided by RIPE NCC, and contributions are made by the community who share their code

and provide tutorials https://labs.ripe.net/Members/wilhelm/ripe-atlas-code-for-analysis-and-statistics-reporting

Nikolay Melnikov, Hands-on RIPE Atlas, AIMS 2013
http://cnds.eecs.jacobs-university.de/users/nmelnikov/aims2013-ripe-atlas.html
Stéphane Bortzmeyer, Creating and Analysing RIPE Atlas Measurements, RIPE67
https://ripe67.ripe.net/presentations/153-ripe-atlas-udm-api-1.pdf