Re: New Document available: RIPE-271 (fwd)

[Daniel Karrenberg <]

Roberto,

thank you, again, for taking the time share your thoughts. 
I am returning from holiday with a somewhat fresh mind myself now.

I agree that we should publish delay/distance figures as you propose. 
It is the best proposal on the table and if no-one comes up with
something better during RIPE46 we should just do it. 

As Henk has already said, the disclosure policy that you propose is
essentially the current one with those general statistics added.  I
share your concerns but I do not see a sure way to solve both those and
the issue we are addressing with RIPE-271: the RIPE NCC cannot develop
information for closed user groups.  I would like to go with publishing
everything and lowering the service charges for now.  My expectation is
that we will *gain* paying test box hosts this way. 

I have also often thought about a multi-tier measurement network that
could develop into a flatter peer-to-peer network.  There are two
fundamental problems with that.  One is aggregation of the data; unless
you do that at many places this will not scale.  You simply cannot send
all raw results to a central place for analysis.  The second, more
fundamental, problem is that of trusting the validity of observations
taken by someone else and taking responsibility to publish results based
on them; this becomes even more complicated when you cannot identify
those taking the observations and there are parties interested in
inserting certain observations favorable to themselves.  Essentially I
agree with Fotis here: this is hard! However I also agree with you that
we should work in this direction. A valuable step might be to add a 
second tier of test boxes without GPS but still with a formal agreement 
identifying the host and requiring them to operate the box to TTM standards.

A lot to discuss at RIPE46 and the weeks after that.

Daniel