Competitions
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The RIPE Labs Article Competition - RIPE 92

Competition closed

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The RIPE Labs article competition is open! Have something interesting to say about the past, present, or future state of the Internet? Tell your story on RIPE Labs and win a chance to join us at RIPE 92 this May in Edinburgh.

Everything you need to know about the competition, including a more specific list of what we look from the best RIPE Labs articles, is available on the RIPE Labs Competition Rules page.

If you're eligible to enter and you have an idea for an article you’d like to put forward, it's time to get to work. All articles submitted to the competition will go through the usual RIPE Labs review process. When you're ready to send us your entry, just remember to tick the box indicating you'd like this article to be considered for the competition entry before you click to submit it for approval.

We'll stop taking new entries on 3 April 2026 at 23:00 (local Amsterdam time). If you're looking for inspiration, you can see entries from the previous competitions here and here. Good luck!


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When iBGP Full Mesh Is Actually Unnecessary

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José Mª Rivadeneyra

9 min read

A common misconception is that iBGP requires a full mesh or alternatives such as route reflectors. In reality, full mesh is not a protocol requirement, but a design choice that may be unnecessary and even undesirable in stub ASes and small ISPs.

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Forward to Hell? On Misusing Transparent DNS Forwarders For Amplification Attacks

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Maynard Koch

10 min read

DNS infrastructure is infamous for facilitating reflective amplification attacks. Countermeasures such as server shielding, access control, rate limiting and protocol restrictions have improved the situation, but DNS-based reflective amplification attacks persist. Focusing on the threat vector intr…

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93 Please read the article before liking.
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Beyond the Network View: DNS-Driven Application Visibility

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Danny Lachos

6 min read

Network operators often lack visibility into which applications drive their traffic. We present an open-source DNS-based correlation method that enriches NetFlow and BGP data with application and CDN information. This enables a shift from a network-centric to an application-oriented view of traffic.

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13 Please read the article before liking.
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When ToR Instability Collapses Cross-Rack Redundancy Without Breaching SLA

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Ruslan Seyidov

7 min read

This article examines a two-rack deployment where ToR instability quietly collapsed redundancy while SLA metrics remained within bounds, revealing how service-level monitoring can mask structural risk.

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28 Please read the article before liking.
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Make This One Change to Prevent Routing Loops in Your Network

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Maynard Koch

5 min read

Routing loops can trap packets between routers, preventing them from reaching their destination. In some cases, routers even duplicate looping packets, amplifying traffic and threatening Internet stability. We look at how this happens and how operators can prevent it.

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64 Please read the article before liking.
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Testing IXP Configurations Without Breaking Production: A Digital Twin Approach

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Tommaso Caiazzi

7 min read

Configuration mistakes at an IXP can have immediate impact. Building on the earlier IXP Digital Twin project, this article presents a new dashboard that enables operators to recreate production environments, validate routing state, and test member onboarding off production.

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175 Please read the article before liking.
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RootViz: New Root DNS Reachability Dashboard

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Giovane Moura

6 min read

In this guest post, the team at SIDN Labs introduce a new dashboard built on RIPE Atlas data that lets the community visualise real-time measurement results and explore how probes reach the Internet’s root DNS servers.

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39 Please read the article before liking.
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Ukraine as a Laboratory of Internet Resilience

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Eliza Rohotska

14 min read

Ukraine’s Internet has not collapsed under invasion - it has adapted. This article examines what that reveals about the concept of resilience in the context of Internet infrastructure and the people who keep the networks running.

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162 Please read the article before liking.
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