[Atlas-anchors-pilot] Update before the end of 2012

[Vesna Manojlovic]

Dear Atlas Anchors hosts,

just before the holiday season -- or before the Mayans prophecy comes
true ;-) -- I wanted to let you know about the progress of the Atlas
Anchors pilot:

- from the group of first 10 hosts: most of you have either ordered, or
already got and installed your boxes!

- until now, two Atlas Anchors went through the complete steps of being
set up: you have installed it, told us your details, we installed SW on
them, and set them up as "targets" in Atlas!

	- the first measurements that we performed will be used for
"calibration", and the next step on our side is select the "best" probes

	- once you are ready, let us know your IP addresses etc:
	email gii-people at ripe.net
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/atlas-anchors-pilot/2012-November/000106.html

	- in the meantime, lots of our colleagues will be on holidays, so the
progress of enabling Anchors on our side will slow down till January.

	- next steps include "revealing" Anchors as "targets" in User Interface
for customized measurements (UDM) in Atlas...


- in parallel, our developers were working on the new version of "probe
SW" that can be installed on Anchors, and succeeded! We did the testing,
too, and now it's deployed - on our own "test" anchor. We are still
fixing some bugs, and will be enabling the "jumbo probe functionality"
(pun unintended) early next year.

- the research in the virtualization is still in progress.


On the provisioning side, we have heard some not-so-good feedback about
the distributor we have chosen: SCC. They are our standard supplier, and
we used to have good experience with them ourselves; they reassured us
that their world-wide support is going to be the same, but based on your
feedback we will have a meeting with them to discuss the future.

	We got more specific details from them on the delivery times:
	- from the moment of them receiving payment, it takes 3 weeks
	for the delivery from Dell to SCC
	- after that, it takes at least 4 working days till it arrives 	
	to you.

	You will hear more concrete details about your own case
	from Lia, who is in touch with SCC now.


Due to this, and also because of delay in the planning that we had for
the implementation phases of the pilot, we would like to ask next 10
hosts to *wait* with buying the boxes!

We will have more information for you in mid-January!

Have a great end of the year,
happy holidays,
Vesna