In July 2016, during the IETF meeting in Berlin, the popular "rfc podcast" had a special episode aired an interview with Daniel Karrenberg talking about the RIPE NCC and RIPE Atlas.  

 Podcast player, and Twitter announcement

Thanks to the podcast listeners, and with the help of promotion on Twitter, the episode prompted many, many, MANY applications for new RIPE Atlas probe hosts.

Because of both summer vacations and a temporary shortage of probes, there was a delay in shipping - but when the new batch of probes arrived at our office, we started shipping them to applicants, most of whom were from Germany.

 Community of hosts, promoted on Twitter; and top-ten countries according to number of active probes

Currently, with regard to the number of active probes, Germany is leading with more than 1,000. This is more than the USA, which was in the lead for the previous few years. 

RIPE Atlas probes density per country; and probe coverage within Germany

If you want to zoom in to this success-story, you can take a look at this RIPEstat widget. There you can see that, between 22 September and 7 October, the number of activated probes jumped from 999 to 1,157.

 RIPEstat view of historical probes deployment, and zoomed-in

Thank you to all the hosts, in Germany and elsewhere, who are helping to build RIPE Atlas - the largest active measurements platform! 

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Although we are happy that there is so much enthusiasm in Germany, we are still interested in increasing diversity of coverage. To this end, we're looking to reach out to:

• Regions, countries and areas within countries with fewer probes
• Networks (ASNs) with fewer probes
• Deploying RIPE Atlas anchors instead 

If you would like to apply for your own RIPE Atlas probe, here is a special link just for the readers of this RIPE Labs article :) 

If you already have a probe, and want to get in touch:

• Check out the Community pages
• Follow us on Twitter: @RIPE_Atlas
• Subscribe to the mailing list for active users