RIPEstat Live Demo #1

More than 25 people participated in the first RIPEstat demo session that took place earlier today.  More people were interested, but unfortunately we only have 25 licenses for webex at the moment. This will be solved before the next demo session in four weeks, so that everyone who is interested can participate.

The session has been recorded. You can access the live streaming or download the full demo session . This requires a webex specific player. The video of the demo can be viewed in Video High Definition or Video Standard Definition .

Concept of RIPEstat

After the etiquette and the feedback mechanisms for attending these demo sessions were clarified, Daniel Karrenberg introduced the main concept behind the development of the new RIPEstat toolbox. The basic idea is to combine all information services, as well as other public data sources, into one easy to use interface. The name RIPEstat contains the two main types of information we will provide:

• various STATistics related to networking
• the STATus of various aspects in the network

The toolbox will be modular and extendable. In the image below you can see the main concept:  

• the main interface contains only one input field which currently accepts number resources (IP addresses, prefixes, or ASNs)
• as output you will get multiple boxes with different types of information, depending on your query type
• you can drill down each of these boxes to get more details about that type of information
• boxes will be flexible, you can remove them or change their order

There is already a list of most popular queries and a list of your last queries, and we plan to add a news feed showing networking related news items.

Live Demo of RIPEstat

The RIPEstat toolbox is currently available at http://stat.ripe.net . Please note that this is work in progress, but it works and you can use it. The focus is on demonstrating the concept, so performance and visuals still require some work.

During the live demo Erik Romijn presented the clean and simple interface and showed some examples of possible queries and their results.

The tool detects the network you are connected to and presents you with some sample queries you might be interested in: it will list your prefix and your ASN. If you click on one of these links, you will get a number of separate boxes showing different types of information related to that particular prefix or ASN, for instance:

• prefixes originated from that AS
• a graphical view of the prefix distribution in that AS
• matches in RIPE whois

You can then drill down into any of these boxes and find out more details, for instance:

• the stability of a certain prefix
• the geo-location of the network (you can zoom in and out of the map)

It is important to note that some of the data is third-party data that we mirror. There is potential to include other data sets in the future dependent on demand, and to remove datasets from the first prototype if they prove unpopular. There is a comments feature on every page for live public feedback. Currently all comments are public and site-wide (not query specific). We will monitor how this feature is used and develop it further in line with usage and feedback.

Because transparency is an important aspect in the development of this tool, the web access statistics are also public. This information is anonymised, but you will be able to see how and how often the RIEPstat toolbox is used. These statistics will be updated on a daily basis and are available to everyone here .

Future Plans

It is important to note that we are using agile development methodologies and want to build this toolbox together with the community. This requires your involvement and feedback so that you ou get the tools you deserve ;-) We will collect all feedback we receive after each demo and will consider comments and suggestions for future public demo sessions.

Demo sessions will take place regularly every four weeks on Tuesday at 10:30 UTC as detailed here .

We are also monitoring the usage of the tool to get an idea how many people are interested in such a toolbox.

You can follow future developments on http://labs.ripe.net/ripestat

Q & A

After the live demo there was time for questions. Some of them are captured here:

Q1: Will this toolbox be integrate with RIPE Atlas
A1: Yes, we are planning to integrate this with RIPE Atlas, but it will take some time. The current vision is that once you see something in RIPEstat you would like to investigate some more, you would be able to use the same interface to schedule some related RIPE Atlas measurements.

Q2: Will there be a public API (especially for the RIS data)?
A2: This depends on what exactly you are looking for. But multiple output formats are definitely planned. Please advise the MAT-WG of your needs.

Feedback Mechanisms

Please take the time to play with the tool at  http://stat.ripe.net and provide feedback by sending mail to the Measurement, Analysis and Tools-WG: mat-wg@ripe.net .

You can also use one of the following channels:

• leave a comment under this article on RIPE Labs
• leave a comment on the site at  http://stat.ripe.net/
• contact the developers by private mail to ripestat@ripe.net