[atlas] destination_ip_responded field in traceroute measurements

On 10/01/2024 03:46, Malte Tashiro via ripe-atlas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> to my delight I discovered that there is now a 
> "destination_ip_responded" field
> contained in traceroute measurement results. I often want to know this 
> and had
> to handle it myself until now so I'm very happy that this seems to be 
> a built-in
> field now.
>
> I only wonder if this is a feature to stay (since it's not in the 
> documentation
> yet), and if it is server side, i.e., always available independent of 
> the probe
> firmware?

Hi Maite

thank you for your message, and we are glad that you find the field 
`destination_ip_responded` useful.

Yes it is here to stay and it is computed on the server side, by the 
Atlas controllers when they receive the probe reports.
It's therefore independent from the firmware version, although it is 
present in the raw probe results only since its introduction on 16th 
October 2023.
We have just updated the documentation 
https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/apis/result-format

The field was already available for all results when using the RIPE 
Atlas measurement parsing library (Sagan)
https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-sagan

We have also amended the website user interface, showing a green tick in 
the Success column for the traceroute result when the destination is 
reached.
Previously the traceroute was shown as successful if the last hop had 
responded, regardless of the fact that it matched the intended 
destination address or not, and this was leading to ambiguity in the 
interpretation of the results.

Thank you and kind regards
Francesco Iannuzzelli
RIPE Atlas team