[RIPE Atlas Ambassadors] How to get people to actually plug in their probes?

I believe this is a problem everywhere to everyone.

Same happens to me, although I haven’t distributed too many probes so far, from those that I did, a small fraction is connected.

Even those that I sent to people close to me, professors that lead research groups that work on Internet, computer network, measurement related problems… never saw the probes connected. Perhaps more sad is to see these groups publishing papers that somehow use RIPE Atlas or other RIPE tools :-(

That’s somehow a social engineering problem. My feeling is that this is a problem we cannot really overcome by carefully choosing who we send probes to. If we end up distributing the probes only to those very close to us, that work in “perfect” network environments, we will never be able to have at least few “eyes” on those uncharted networks where “ordinary” people are — like the probe in my parents home :-)

-Ricardo


> On Apr 5, 2018, at 11:35, Budiwijaya <bbuuddiiww at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I guess it's all the same problem around the world. Same here in Indonesia.
> 
> For me, everytime I handed over a probe, usually I ask them to fill
> google form. just basic contacts and name.
> Some are still offline after 2 year handoff. Try contact them, no response.
> Some are they already switch jobs.
> 
> Sometimes if I beg them to send it back to me if they not gonna plug
> it in, so I can distribute it elsewhere, they just ignore.
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 6:48 AM, Philip Paeps <philip at trouble.is> wrote:
>> I had a conversation with a new probe host who was wondering how many of the
>> probes I hand out "walk off" never to be seen again.
>> 
>> Sadly, that's quite a lot of them in my case.  I guess I need to find
>> conferences with more reliable attendees?
>> 
>> People promise to plug them in but then they get distracted.  Or they move
>> and the probes end up in boxes.
>> 
>> How do other ambassadors twist their hosts' arms into actually plugging in
>> probes?  (And keeping them plugged in!)
>> 
>> Philip
>> 
>> --
>> Philip Paeps
>> Senior Reality Engineer
>> Ministry of Information
>> 
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> 
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