[RIPE Atlas Ambassadors] Question of high availability for atlas via different ASNs

On 20.07.17 19:55 , Anurag Bhatia wrote:
> Hello, everyone!
> 
> 
> Greetings from India. I am hosting RIPE Atlas probe at home for a while.
> I have two connections - primary which is high capacity symmetric link
> and secondary which is a low-end cable broadband connection. The core
> router is Ubnt edge router and it runs "load balancing" to keep primary
> link as primary and switch to secondary if the primary is down for more
> than 30 seconds. This setup works well for me but RIPE Atlas is not part
> of this "auto switch" if the primary is down. 
> 
> 
> 
> I wonder if it makes sense to add RIPE Atlas to it? 
> inclu
>  1. It will improve my monthly availability report and possibly will
>     move from 98% uptime (of primary) to 99.9% uptime (of both links)
>     and that's actually real uptime on LAN. 
> 
>  2. But it would screw up probe data as both networks are completely
>     different and have different sets of upstream resulting in different
>     routing preference to root DNS instances etc. 
> 
> 
> Also, does probe comes only if connectivity is switched? It's a non-BGP
> setup and when I say "auto switch" of uplinks, it's basically switching
> the default route from primary to secondary while keeping same private
> IP on LAN side. Due to NATing, WAN IP changes in this scenario. 
> 
> 
> 
> Curious to hear thoughts if I should or should not. Another way, of
> course, would be to do it for a month and see data. :) 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks. 



Anurag,

I have exactly this set-up, also with an ubnt edge router. I have two
probes connected #7 & #8:

https://atlas.ripe.net/probes/7/
https://atlas.ripe.net/probes/8/

I route the probes explicitly to each uplink independently of which
uplink gets used by most of the household.

Personally I would suggest for you to choose one uplink and measure that
like you are doing now. If you feel adventurous, get another probe and
configure like I do. I would advise against measuring a combination of
two uplinks. It will produce confusing data, especially if the uplinks
are via two different ASes.

Daniel