[atlas] Paris-traceroute variations

Hi Juan,

On 2014/06/19 16:59 , Juan Antonio Cordero Fuertes wrote:
> Not sure this is the right place to ask this... sorry if it is not.
> 
> I'm trying to configure Paris-traceroute measurements, and it is not
> clear for me what is the meaning of the /paris/ parameter. In
> https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/udm/ it is said that it corresponds, for
> values from 1 to 16, to "the number of variations to be used for a Paris
> traceroute <http://www.paris-traceroute.net/>". What is this? Does it
> correspond to the number of initial probes to be used by
> paris-traceroute? I am unable to figure it out from the RIPE Atlas
> docs... any indication would be appreciated.

Paris-traceroute tries to make sure that all packets of a traceroute
take the same route through a load balancer. This in contrast to
traditional traceroute where packets from different hops typically take
different routes when load balancers are involved.

However, in the case of paris-traceroute it is still interesting to find
out if there are multiple routes or not. For this reason, the traceroute
measurement creates different variations that may take a different route.

Each interval, it will try one variation. So if you select 16 variations
then it will take 16 intervals before you get back to the first one.

Philip