RIPE Labs

A new tool joins the family of applications whose goal it is to take full advantage of RIPE Atlas to monitor availability, consistency and reachability of networks and services: the RIPE Atlas Monitor.

This week, the RIPE NCC saw a milestone as the 10,000th Local Internet Registry (LIR) received IPv6 addresses. The first block of IPv6 addresses was allocated from IANA to the RIPE NCC in 1999, so we have been distributing IPv6 addresses for 17 years. In those years we have seen interesting policy developments, making it easier for LIRs to obtain enough IPv6 to satisfy their needs. In this article we track the policy developments that have made it progressively easier for LIRs to get the IPv6 they need.

The RIPE Atlas Interface Hackathon is an opportunity to work together with RIPE Atlas developers and other enthusiastic coders and hackers. The hackathon will take place from 21-22 May in Copenhagen ahead of the RIPE 72 Meeting. Find out how you can take part!

We tend to make a number of assumptions about the Internet, and sometimes these assumptions don’t always stand up to critical analysis. We were perhaps ‘trained’ by the claims of the telephone service to believe that these communications networks supported a model of universal connectivity. Any telephone handset could establish a call with any other telephone handset was the underlying model of a ubiquitous telephone service, and we’ve carried that assumption into our perception of the Internet. On the Internet anyone can communicate with anyone else – right?

Following my research on DNS reachability and performance, I found interesting results for specific domain names.

The RIPE NCC membership has raised concerns regarding members setting up additional Local Internet Registry (LIR) accounts. The RIPE NCC Executive Board is now asking the RIPE NCC membership to discuss this. The article below provides some background information, data and statistics for the discussion.

This is the second part in a series of articles looking at the use of DNS servers in Iran. For the second part I will continue measuring performance and reachability for two more sets of DNS resolvers: TIC and Verisign.

While most Internet users are not aware of the importance of DNS resolution in their overall web browsing experience, they often complain about shortage of bandwidth when experiencing sluggish Internet connectivity. It is no surprise that most of the service providers also ignore this fact by redirecting their customer DNS traffic to public DNS servers.

RIPE Atlas has been in operation for more than five years now, and its network of probes and users has grown tremendously in that time. We’ve also added anchors, sponsors and ambassadors to the system, developed a huge array of new tools, visualisations and features, and RIPE Atlas data is now being used by network operators, engineers and researchers around the world. As a result, we thought it was time to revamp the RIPE Atlas website, which hadn’t changed much over the past five years despite all the changes to RIPE Atlas itself. Get an overview of some of the biggest changes and new features - then check out the new site, which launches today!

In this report we provide some more details about the incidents of 30 November and 1 December 2015, as seen from the K-root environment. We also share some of the lessons we took away from this event.