Summary

  • In December 2013, the RIPE NCC proposed making every new RIPE Atlas probe and user measurement public from mid-April 2014, with no non-public option for new items. Vesna Manojlovic invited feedback.
  • After 11 mailing-list replies and two RIPE Labs replies, she announced a revised plan in March 2014: public by default for new probes and web-created measurements, while hosts and users kept a route to non-public operation.

The first plan had a date and a door that closed behind it. From mid-April 2014, the RIPE NCC proposed that every new RIPE Atlas probe and measurement would be public. Earlier items marked non-public would keep their setting. A new host, however, would lose that choice. For a network built from boxes installed in other people's homes and offices, this was a consequential bit of interface design.

Vesna Manojlovic, then the RIPE NCC's community builder for measurement tools, asked the people carrying those boxes to speak. By 9 January, she reported that most early comments opposed the plan. Some wanted the existing choice; others suggested releasing results after a delay. She promised a revised proposal. The exchange reads less like a philosophical seminar than a group of people asking exactly which traces would be visible, and when.

The answer arrived on 11 March 2014. Eleven people had replied on the Atlas mailing list and two on RIPE Labs. Six supported keeping the option to withhold publication; three supported more openness; one preferred less; three suggested delayed results; one was neutral. The categories overlap, so the figures describe arguments rather than a ballot count. The RIPE NCC dropped the original sweeping change.

The revised design had a subtler thumb on the scale. New probes would be marked public by default when someone applied, with an opt-out. The web form for user-defined measurements would preselect public. Manojlovic also proposed extra credits for public contributions, public results for research funded by special credits, and clearer documentation of what each setting exposed. These were items in the March plan, not a checklist of features proven to have shipped. The important turn was concrete: visibility became the first click, while a host could still choose the other path.

That path survives in today's RIPE Atlas privacy documentation. Built-in measurement results are public. A user-defined measurement made through the web interface is public; the API can create a non-public one. The API's anonymous-access guide identifies an is_public field and distinguishes public objects from owner-only ones. It also describes which probe details and network prefixes remain visible. A setting is only useful when the manual explains its edges.

Manojlovic now appears on the RIPE NCC staff page as a senior community development officer. The 2014 correspondence shows a more revealing job description: she took a proposed default into public discussion, counted the objections, and returned with a switch people could actually use. Thirteen replies cannot speak for an entire Internet. They were enough to change the product.