Internet Delay Measurements using Test Traffic
                           Data Disclosure Policy

                              Henk Uijterwaal

                                  RIPE-NCC
                                June 16, 1998

                            Document: RIPE-180.ps

                                 Version 1.0

1 Introduction

This document describes the data-disclosure policy for the Test-Traffic
Project [1]. This policy describes who can access the data from the project,
what one can do with the data and which conditions must be fulfilled before
the data can be published outside the RIPE-meetings and working groups. This
policy is based on the ideas described in [1] and has been extensively
discussed in a BoF at RIPE-30. Drafts of this document have been circulated
amongst the ISP's who participated in the project in May 1998. It is assumed
that ISP's who will join the project after May 1998, agree with this policy
before deciding to join the project.

Collecting data with the test-boxes means collecting data about ISP's and
the performance of their networks. We realize that this is a delicate matter
as no ISP wants to see an analysis that puts the performance of his networks
in a bad daylight, in particular if the scientific merits of the analysis
cannot be proven. On the other hand, the results of the test-traffic project
can be a valuable tool for both day-to-day operations as well as long term
planning, we certainly do not want to be too restrictive about what can be
done with the data.

The basis of our data-disclosure policy is that, at the moment, the
test-traffic project should be considered a scientific experiment. We do
measurements and collect data that we believe is correct. The analysis
focusses on describing the data and finding parameters that describe the
overall network performance. However, we have not proven this (yet) and
until such time, one should not use the data to judge the performance of an
ISP.

2 Access to the data

2.1 Participating ISP's

As stated in an earlier document [1], each ISP hosting a test-box will have
access to the data collected with the test-box at his site. There will be
two ways in which the ISP can access the data:

1.   Using a telnet connection to the test-box. This method gives the ISP
     access to the delay and routing information as it is being recorded by
     the test-box within seconds after the data has been taken. However, as
     we explained in [1] each test-box can only record incoming delay
     measurements and outgoing routing vectors. No information about
     outgoing delay measurements will be available.
2.   Access to the data-base. This method will give access to the results of
     both incoming and outgoing delay measurements and routing vectors.
     However, this requires that the data is first collected and processed
     at a central point, so the data will not be available immediately.

The data that is available to participating ISP's will include IP-numbers of
the test-boxes that the box communicated with, their position and other
details like that.

Instructions for accessing the data are available from
http://www.ripe.net/test-traffic/Host_testbox/access.html . As a security
feature, data will only be made available to machines with IP-numbers that
have been specified by the ISP in advance.

2.2 Others

All others will have access to an anonymous version of the data, that is
data where IP-numbers, location of the test-boxes and all other information
that can be used to trace where the boxes are located has been removed from
the data.

Again, details on how to access the data will be available from
http://www.ripe.net/test-traffic/Host_testbox/access.html .

2.2.1 At a later stage

It has been suggested that, at a later stage, old data should be available
to everybody without restrictions. If this suggestion is approved, everybody
can access data that ha