Robert Kisteleki

RIPEstat Live Demo #8

Robert Kisteleki
Contributors: Christian Teuschel

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This article summarises yesterday's RIPEstat demo session, including new features, changes and improvements. At the end of the article you can find the date of the next demo. Please also note the call for feedback about specific features we are planning to work on.


For reference, please see summaries of the previous demo sessions:

 
 
During this eighth interactive live demo, the development team explained and demonstrated the tool's features and new functionality.

Things we worked on recently

  • Plugins (new and enhance existing ones)
  • Raw data output
  • Increase system performance
  • Bug fixes

See more details on each of these items below.

Plugins

  • Routing History for prefixes (new)
    • This plugin reports how a prefix has been routed on the Internet. It shows the history of ASes originating the prefix (or related ones) over time.

RoutingHistory

 Figure 1: Routing History for prefixes

  • Geolocation (refactored)
    • Added indicator showing IP space that's without geographical information
    • Satellite providers and anonymous proxies are considered
    • Geolocation for ASes
      • Aggregation is done on a country level which helps to keep the map from being cluttered with  thousands of markers; this is especially useful for large ASes
      • A table showing detailed information about all the prefixes the AS is announcing including individual country distribution. Prefixes are clickable to easily jump to the geolocation plugin for the selected prefix.
    • Geolocation for prefixes
      • Aggregation is done on a city level which keeps the number of markers on the map low and at the same time doesn't strain the information.
      • A table showing detailed information about the IP ranges that form the foundation of the maps data.
      • Note: Geolocation for IPv6 is based on a different data source which gives less fine-grained information about the usage. That's something we try to change in the future.

Geolocation

 Figure 2: Geolocation showing aggregated information

  • Visibility
    • Added indicator showing global visibility
  • AS Path Length
    • Hop count is indicated in the radar chart
    • Hovering over the edge points displays details
    • Locations of the RRCs are included

 

AS path length

 

Figure 3: Upgraded view of AS path length

Raw data

  • Many plugins return a more descriptive data output format (key/value pairs)
  • Note: raw data API is not yet versioned, so it might change

Performance

  • The use of caching processed results increased the responsiveness of the system as well as the overall user experience
  • More plugins were switched to faster backends (geolocation)
  • Work in progress: switching RIPEstat from a VM to a cluster solution
  • Plugins:
    • Number-of-prefixes / Prefix-size-distribution plugins
      • processing algorithm has been improved (up to 10 x faster now)

Bug fixes

  • We applied many bug fixes, for a details please visit the change log on RIPEstat.

Things we're considering to work on in the future

  • Including a "Like" button for the plugins
  • Introducing user profiles that let you choose a preset of plugins based on usage patterns (e.g. admin, researcher)
  • Trying to simplify the way we present data
  • Ways of sharing data
    • Enable users to create customized pages and share them with a link
    • Enable users to include the output of the plugins into their own webpages

NOTE: Let us know what you think about the items above and which one you think is most important, so that we can set priorities accordingly.

Feedback

As always, we invite your comments, questions and feedback on our demo session and RIPEstat itself. The main place for questions and discussions is the Measurement, Analysis and Tools Working Group: 

You can also use one of the following channels:

Video

The video archive of the demo will be available shortly from the RIPEstat website at http://stat.ripe.net .

Future Demo

Our next demo is scheduled for 4 October 2011 at 9:30 - 10:00 UTC. The link will be announced on RIPE Labs closer to the date.

 

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About the author

For many years I have been the leader of the Research and Development team at the RIPE NCC leading a dedicated team of thinkers to support the RIPE community by providing network research, data analysis and prototype tool development and services including RIPE Atlas and RIPEstat. As of 2023, I'm working as a principal engineer in order to assist the CTO and the RIPE NCC's information services.

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