Q1: It seems that it is rather old technology. I wonder whether it is still effective for monitoring current situations or not.
Les>
It is old technology. In particular:
- the analysis tools do not support IPv6 (the measurement agent does support it).
- the visualization tools are jaded compared to modern tools.
The advantage is it is standard over almost 20 years worth of data. It also focuses on places with poor connectivity (the Digital Divide). Further this data is freely available via anonymous FTP.
Newer technologies such as Akamai (see https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/state-of-the-internet-connectivity-visualization.jsp which goes back quarter by quarter to 2007 with Akamai download speeds by country with a linear y scale. The full report is at: https://content.akamai.com/pg8228-q4-2016-soti-connectivity-report.html) and perfSONAR only have data going back a few years. Also bear in mind the analysis tools do not support IPv6 (the measurement agent does support it). An alternative approach is to mine this data (it is available via csv files) develop the aggregations
The traceroute.pl tool (for remote traceroutes and pings) supports IPv6, is part of perfSONAR and is independent of PingER. Even if you don’t install a PingER MA (pinger2.pl) I would recommend installing these.
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Les> The data is public and free to use. You can use whatever you want. The data is updated daily.
Q4: Future support
Les> The most time-consuming part is working with the various contacts to keep all the Measurement Agents running. Some sites are concerned about old equipment, or possible security issues, or the contacts have left etc. Thus next year I may just keep SLAC running and not worry about others dis-appearing.