RIPEstat Live Demo #8

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:

first demo

second demo

third demo

fourth demo
fifth demo

sixth demo

seventh demo

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: mat-wg [at] ripe [dot] net

You can also use one of the following channels: