[atlas] New vendor for RIPE Atlas v3 anchors

On 08/11/2017 04:52, Bryan Socha wrote:
> Doesn't this version support 10G in some way?    Is there a vendor who
> is offering it with 10G or at least in a case you could add it
> yourself after?

Hi Bryan,

Quick answer: no, it doesn't support 10G. In our different board
evaluations, we found that requiring support for 10G conflicts with the
desire to make the box cheaper and easily available. Getting a PCIe slot
on cheap embedded boards is not common - they usually support miniPCIe
instead.

Longer answer: we did look, though :)

There are two options:

1) the APU3a2/4 models have a PCIe slot option, but you'd need to order
it as a custom board option, and get a case made that supports it. We
could not find any existing cases that would support an extra card, or
any current vendors who sell the board with the PCIe slot option.

2) It might be possible to use a miniPCIe-to-PCIe extender, to borrow a
1x PCIe lane from one of the miniPCIe slots and present it on a
full-size PCIe card slot. We actually did try this, but could not figure
out how to make it work. And you'd still need a case that supports a card.

In the end we decided it was not wothwhile, since we wanted a model that
was easily available worldwide from multiple suppliers.

Kind Regards,
Colin

-- 
Colin Petrie
Systems Engineer
RIPE NCC