[atlas] What is 'iwantbcp38compliancetesting' user tag?

Hi,

> On 09 Jan 2016, at 15:15, Geert Jan de Groot <GeertJan.deGroot at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> 
> When revisiting the settings of my probe, I found this
> 'iwantbcp38compliancetesting' user tag. 
> 
> I know what BCP38 is, but what is the meaning of the tag?
> Is it a poll?

BCP 38 is a standard to prevent spoofed packets coming from networks. These spoofed packets are a popular means of performing DDoS attacks. This would go away when all networks implement BCP 38, thus filtering out all packets with spoofed source addresses.

The problem is that it is very very hard to measure compliance of BCP 38. A simple way would be to send out spoofed packets. There has been discussion on this list to allow this measurement to be performed on RIPE Atlas probes. The community currently is against it, as sending spoofed packets can raise red flags for network operators, or is possibly against the user policy. Users are often not aware of these consequences or rules surrounding spoofed packets.

Using these tags is probably a silent protest against this decision ;)

Jeroen.