Creating a “weather map” showing the condition of the Internet all over the world is the declared goal of the Atlas project initiated by regional internet registry organization Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC).
Located in the Netherlands, they aim to ship small hardware “probes” to all over the world. Volunteers on five continents are asked to plug in these small Ethernet devices into their personal or company’s network, building measuring points for “the last mile” of Internet access points in a large number of countries. One of the subjects that should be investigated is the suitability of IPv6 in everyday use. As we all have to prepare for this, this project can be very important to all of us. According to Daniel Karrenberg from RIPE, these probes do not sniff any of the participants’ network traffic, but only perform measurements using Ping, DNS resolution via both IPv4 and IPv6, and trace route. RIPE already has longstanding experience in monitoring the traffic at Internet Service Providers, but the Atlas project will extend knowledge about the on and on growing Internet just into the homes. First—statistically unproven—monitoring results are already available.
This could be the largest network monitoring project ever, and as a monitoring company, we’re of course excited about it! We at Paessler not only set up several probes to contribute to the monitoring results, but we’re also sponsoring the project. I’m sure long term monitoring of the Internet all over the world will show us many interesting and new aspects of network monitoring and we’re keen on seeing the results!
Paessler has already set up several probes around Nuremberg. We'll keep you updated with pictures and our own first monitoring results.
