With more than 130 routed ASNs, and more than 50 million Internet users in the economy, Indonesia operates a sizeable part of the Internet in the Asia Pacific region.
Measuring the network in the region using RIPE Atlas has been a challenge, however. The RIPE Atlas project uses a global network of probes, providing an understanding of the state of the Internet in real time. The number of RIPE Atlas Probes in Indonesia numbered less than 50 at the end of last year.
APNIC has been working with the RIPE NCC since June 2014 to encourage the deployment of RIPE Atlas Anchors and probes in the Asia Pacific. The most recent anchor deployment in Indonesia was in Surabaya earlier this year.
Mohammad Nur Budiwijaya, a network engineer with managed service provider, Wowrack Indonesia, installed and turned on the anchor at the end of February.
Nur Budiwijaya said he nominated to host an anchor to benefit Indonesia’s Internet community, and because he wants “to participate in the biggest network probes on the Internet”.
“As the second-largest city in Indonesia, Surabaya needs an anchor here,” he says. “A lot of ISP/NAPs have PoPs here in Surabaya, which also has a local East Java Internet Exchange.”
He says hosting the anchor provides many benefits to the Internet community.
“As a network engineer, sometimes I need to troubleshoot from some other network, and usually I will call or email them to ask for a traceroute or ping results, or vice versa. Now with the anchor in our network, we will be able to give the network community the ability to test out from our network to their network, hassle free.”
His company also benefits indirectly, “as our company will be known to others that are involved in the networking area”.
“The program aims to have global coverage so that we can provide good quality data to everyone, by making the measurements data accessible for everyone,” says the RIPE NCC’s Lia Hestina, who coordinates the RIPE Atlas ambassador program.
“Having at least one anchor in a country will help the regional Internet community to see not only the behaviour and connectivity of the network in the region, but also make visible anything that could not be seen before it was placed.”
Read Lia’s post Measuring the Internet in Indonesia, one probe at a time
Lia, who visited Surabaya after APRICOT 2017, says having a second anchor in Indonesia would help generate a more diverse set of results in the country.
“Each Anchor will be measured by hundreds of probes that are specifically selected for that anchor. Having more anchors helps in getting a more diverse set of results, discovering more connectivity and potentially helping more in discovering issues,” she says.
At APRICOT 2017 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the regional RIPE Atlas users and ambassadors managed to meet for an informal discussion and to share their experiences.
“I managed to get a good amount of valuable feedback from the community, especially the ambassadors, on how we can improve the platform to make it easier for them to do their work in helping us distribute and spread the word about RIPE Atlas,” Lia says.
“I am now working with the developers to see what is feasible and, hopefully, we will be able to take small steps in improving the user experience of the platform.”
If your organization is interested in hosting a RIPE Atlas Anchor, please contact Srinivas Chendi at APNIC.
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