[RIPE Atlas Ambassadors] News and Happy Holidays!

On 24 Dec 2015, at 16:22, Gil Bahat wrote:


> 3. People will chip in if explained that the credits will help our 
> company
> deliver better service to our users. However, the current credit 
> system
> forces me to register it under my name and not theirs. it would be 
> better
> if at registration point, a user could permanently assign credits to a
> recipient or group.

i’m not sure why this is the case.  i have exactly one probe 
registered in my name, and have distributed a few hundred.
it’s easy enough, in an organisation, to have a general alias (eg. 
ripe-probes at example.isp.com) to which something like the network 
team/whomever can have access to.  presumably this is a trusted group so 
tracking things like credits usage, etc. is a non-issue?


> 4. Building up on the above, perhaps gamification and groups are a 
> good way
> to encourage adoption. Seeing how many credits your group generated 
> makes
> it a bit like a (positive) contest.
> 5. I have found trouble with getting coverage for mobile (3G/4G) 
> networks.
> there are very few setups in which these are gateway'd to ethernet. as 
> a
> case in point, we have a USB 3G adaptor as backup in the company and 
> no one
> would mind if it's connected to a probe when it's unused (which is 
> 99.99%
> of the time), but there is no physical port available for this (and
> possibly no CDC ethernet driver). another option might be to allow the
> probes to interface with mobile phones somehow, which would entail
> occasional access to these networks when a paired phone is nearby, but
> perhaps it would be better than nothing.

my general rule of thumb has been to advise *AGAINST* deployment in 
mobile networks (or more correctly, against deployment in 
usage-based-billing networks), unless the organisation/individual 
understands the costs attached to this.  since the majority of mobile 
accounts are limited to some silly data-cap, after which it becomes 
exorbitantly expensive, and even a relatively idle probe, can consume up 
to 2.5GB of data a month.  that’s a nasty surprise for someone that 
wasn’t expecting to see this data usage.  ymmv.

—n.