[RIPE Atlas Ambassadors] [uknof] RIPE Atlas Probes

On 27 Sep 2017, at 23:58, Martin Hannigan <hannigan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Howdy all,

hi martin,
this is probably better suited to the atlas ambassador list so i’ve moved your question here.  apologies if that seems presumptuous.

i’ve found that trying to get folks in a local environment clued up on what these are, and why they are important, and then having *them* acting as a distributor or point of contact for these domestically, is a better way to have them stay online in the long term, than to have an absentee ambassador from half-way around the world.  in the list you mention below, it would be a lot easier for someone locally to provide suppor for something like the recent USB issue, if the probe hoster runs into a problem.  overall, that’s a better way, i think, of creating ambassadors, and extending the community.

of course that means that you earn fewer ambassafor credits for online probes, but since these are not tradable for any IPv4 space, these is no longer so attractive…     ;-)


> A small group of us are doing relief work in the Caribbean. We're helping to deploy managed public hotspots to expand the access of what little they have. 
> NANOG is coming up shortly. We have coopertion of the incumbent, the gov and NGOs. There is shipping access as a result to places that are hurt. We would like to get probes into these countries. 
> Selfishly, so we don't need to set up an extraneous (or at least much) of a monitoring environment. The probes will do almost everything immediately relevant. Second, it's also an opportunity to stage probes so that we can get better data. It may not help out immediately, but for the next time, we could have a much better view of the damage.
> 
> How can we work the process to make this feasible?

i’ve found the NCC’s atlas team to be very helpful here;  i’ve found good folk in a local economy, and put them in touch with the atlas team, and the necessaries happened to get a standard box of 10 probes to the “new” ambassador.  there was nothing extraordinary needed to make this happen.  kudos to the NCC team! 


> Countries we're working to help are USVI, BVI and OECS islands. 

the technical manager at the regulator in BVI is a friend, and should be able to help make sure these stay online.  details sent unicast.

consider, though, that in the areas that you provide, there is still a lot of usage-based billing happening.  a mostly idle probe can easily eat 3GB of data, which is significant if someone is living on a data cap of 5GB   (true story!).  so i always make a point of explaining the data-usage that’s going to happen, that’s often overlooked by the shininess of a having a new toy at home/participating in the project.

good luck,
—n.