RIPE Atlas - Cisco Workshop for researchers and operators

1. Paris | 9 March 2016
Daniel Karrenberg
Massimo Candela
Science Division
RIPE NCC
RIPE Atlas Workshop

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Goals
• Learn how to:
- Benefit from using RIPE Atlas measurements for network
monitoring and troubleshooting
- Use API calls and Command line tool to create and inspect
measurements
- Write code to manipulate Atlas data
- Receive measurement results in real-time
• Get your questions answered by a developer

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Prerequisites
• Do you have a RIPE NCC Access account?
• If not - quickly create one: ripe.net/register
• Do you have credits to spend?
• Redeem this voucher “cisco-paris-atlas” on https://
atlas.ripe.net/user/credits/

4. Introduction to
RIPE Atlas

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• RIPE Atlas is a global active measurements
platform
• Probes hosted by volunteers
• Data publicly available
• "RIPE Atlas: A Global Internet Measurement
Network" (PDF). Internet Protocol Journal 18.
September 2015. ISSN 1944-1134.

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RIPE Atlas numbers
•9,300+ probes connected (170+ Anchors)
•3,700+ results collected per second
•35,000+ user-defined measurements weekly
- Five types of user-defined measurements available to probe
hosts and RIPE NCC members: ping, traceroute, DNS, SSL,
NTP

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RIPE Atlas coverage

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RIPE Atlas results
• Ongoing global measurements towards root
nameservers
- Visualised as Internet traffic maps
• Ongoing regional measurements towards
“anchors”
• Users can run customised measurements
- ping, traceroute, DNS, SSL/TLS, NTP and HTTP

9. Measurement Results

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Looking up measurements results
• Go to “Measurements, Maps and Tools” >
“Measurements”

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RIPE Atlas REST APIs
• List of scheduled measurements
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/{TYPE}/
• Information about a specific measurement
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/{ID}/
• Results of a specific measurement
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/{ID}/results

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RIPE Atlas REST APIs
• List of probes
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/
• Information about a specific probe
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/probes/{ID}
• List of anchors
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/anchors/
• Information about a specific anchor
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/anchors/{ID}

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RIPE Atlas REST APIs
• List of measurements targeted to an anchor
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/anchor-measurements/
• Info about a specific anchor measurement
- https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/anchor-measurements/{ID}
V2 has been not released yet
The format may change
Documentation: https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/rest/

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Available visualisations
• List of probes:
sortable by RTT
• Map: colour-coded by
RTT
• LatencyMON:
compare multiple
latency trends

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LatencyMON

16. Creating a Measurement

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Benefits of your own measurements
• A customer reports a problem: he cannot
reach one of your servers
- You can schedule measurements (e.g. pings or
traceroutes) from up to 500 RIPE Atlas probes worldwide to
check where the problem might be
• Measuring packet loss on a suspected “bad”
link
• Testing anycast deployment

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Credits system
• Running your own measurements cost credits
- ping = 10 credits, traceroute = 20, etc.
• Why? Fairness and to avoid overload
• Daily spending limit & max measurements user can create
• Hosting a RIPE Atlas probe earns credits
• Earn extra credits by:
- Being a RIPE NCC member
- Hosting an anchor
- Sponsoring probes

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Credits overview
My Atlas > Credits
Give credits
to someone

20. DEMO
Create a Measurement (GUI)
Explore advanced parameters

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Using API to schedule a measurement
• Using command-line & scripting:
- https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/measurement-creation-api/
- https://atlas.ripe.net/keys/
• You will need API keys
- To create measurements without logging in
- To securely share your measurement data

22. DEMO
Create an API key
Create a Measurement (API)

23. Exercise
Create a Measurement

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Tasks
• Create a TCP traceroute measurement:
- Involving 10 probes
- The closest five at the workshop location (Issy-les-Moulineaux)
- Another random five from another country of your choice
- To a target of your choice
- Duration of two days
- Repeated every 60 seconds
1. Model a measurement using the GUI
2. Create API key
3. Schedule a measurement using the API

25. Code with RIPE Atlas

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RIPE Atlas Sagan
• A translation layer for RIPE Atlas
measurement results
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe.atlas.sagan
- pip install ripe.atlas.sagan
• Transforms JSON results in Python objects
• The output is firmware version transparent
• Pre-computes useful attributes (e.g. Does a
traceroute reach the target host?)

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RIPE Atlas Cousteau
• A python wrapper around RIPE Atlas API
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-cousteau
- pip install ripe.atlas.cousteau
• Fetches results from API and streaming, and
probe and measurement information
• You can manage measurements:
- Create a measurement
- Stop a measurement
- Change probes involved

28. DEMO
Fetching and Creating a Measurement with
RIPE Atlas Cousteau

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RIPE Atlas Cousteau Demo
• Fetch results
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-cousteau#fetch-results
• Fetch real-time results
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-cousteau#fetch-real-time-
results
• Create a measurement
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-cousteau#creating-a-
measurement
• More
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-cousteau

30. Exercise
Create a Measurement by Using RIPE
Atlas Cousteau

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Tasks
• Create a ping measurement:
- Involving 10 probes worldwide
- Targeting www.google.fr
- One-off
• Annotate the measurement ID returned
• Fetch the results after a few minutes (no real-time)

32. Real-time performance
monitoring

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RIPE Atlas streaming
• RIPE Atlas streaming is an architecture that
allows users to receive the measurement
results as soon as they are sent by the probes
- in real time
- Publish/subscribe through web sockets
• There are three types of data:
- Measurement results
- Probe connection status events
- Measurements metadata

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RIPE Atlas streaming
• Visualising network outages
-http://sg-pub.ripe.net/demo-area/atlas-stream/conn/
• Real-time server and performance monitoring
• Filtering and reusing measurement results
• Documentation:
- https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/result-streaming/

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How it Works (Client)
1.Create a socket
2.Create a callback (function)
- for each event type
- to be executed for each message received
3.Start listening the channel
4.Declare what you want to receive for that
event type

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How it Works (Client)

37. Exercise
Using streaming API

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EX1: Monitoring server reachability
• Scenario: customers are complaining that it
occasionally takes a long time to reach your
service or server
• Action: ping your server from 500 probes
- Decide what is acceptable latency threshold to apply
- Notice and react when you start receiving samples
• Task: Use the ping measurement ID 2340408
- Choose which threshold (e.g. greater than 30ms)
- Imposes the threshold on “min” (the minimum result of the
three ping attempts)

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Steps
1.Go to
http://atlas.ripe.net/webinar/streaming01.html
2.Open the development console
3.Wait for results to arrive
4.Save the HTML file locally and edit the code

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Page Source

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Example of results

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EX2: Monitoring server reachability
• Imagine you are in the situation described in
the exercise before, but you didn’t schedule a
measurement in advance
- You don’t have a measurement ID
• You want to get all the measurements
reaching 193.0.10.197
• Now restrict the results to just include ping
measurements

43. Command-line Interface (CLI) Toolset

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RIPE Atlas CLI
• Network troubleshooting for command line
pros
• Familiar output (ping, dig, traceroute)
• Linux/OSX
- http://ripe-atlas-tools.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
installation.html#requirements-and-installation
• Windows [experimental]
- https://github.com/chrisamin/ripe-atlas-tools-win32

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RIPE Atlas CLI
• Open source
- RIPE NCC led community contribution
• Documentation
- https://ripe-atlas-tools.readthedocs.org/
• Source:
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-tools/
• How to contribute:
- https://github.com/RIPE-NCC/ripe-atlas-tools/blob/master/
CONTRIBUTING.rst

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Configure RIPE Atlas CLI
• Reuse the API key of the previous exercise
- Or create a new one at https://atlas.ripe.net/keys/
• Configure your CLI
- ripe-atlas configure --set authorisation.create=MY_API_KEY

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Fetch an existing measurement
• Fetch the ping measurement 2340408
- ripe-atlas report 2340408

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Search probes
• Search all probes in AS 3333
- ripe-atlas probes --asn 3333
• Show specific fields
- ripe-atlas probes --asn 3333 --field asn_v6 --field country
--field is_public --field description --field status
• Search for probes in and around Paris
- ripe-atlas probes --location "Paris, France" --radius 15

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Create a measurement
• Create a ping measurement to wikipedia.org
- One-off, default parameters
- ripe-atlas measure ping --target wikipedia.org

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Other examples of ping
• Geo-specific from 20 probes from Canada:
- ripe-atlas measure ping --target example.com --probes 20
--from-country ca
• 20 Canadian probes that definitely support
IPv6:
- ripe-atlas measure ping --target example.com --probes 20
--from-country ca --include-tag system-ipv6-works
• Create a recurring measurement:
- ripe-atlas measure ping --target example.com --interval
3600

51. Exercise
Using RIPE Atlas CLI

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Search probes
• Use the traceroute command to test the
reachability of wikipedia.org on TCP port 443
from 20 probes in France
• Render the results collected in the previous
exercise in json format

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Search probes
• Use the traceroute command to test the
reachability of wikipedia.org on TCP port 443
from 20 probes in France
- ripe-atlas measure traceroute --protocol TCP --target
wikipedia.org --port 443 --probes 20 --from-country fr
• Render the results collected in the previous
exercise in json format
- ripe-atlas report {MSM_ID} --renderer raw

54. Take part in the
RIPE Atlas community

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RIPE Atlas community (part 1)
• Individual volunteers host probes in homes or
offices
• Organisations host RIPE Atlas Anchors
• Sponsor organisations give financial support
or host multiple probes in their own networks

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Contact us
• https://atlas.ripe.net & http://roadmap.ripe.net/
ripe-atlas/
• Users’ mailing list: ripe-atlas@ripe.net
• Articles and updates: https://labs.ripe.net/atlas
• Questions and bugs: atlas@ripe.net
• Twitter: @RIPE_Atlas and #RIPEAtlas