The RIPE Atlas project is an epic attempt to measure the Internet. That is to say, it's s network built within the internet that the public can use to capture useful data like ping times from multiple targets to a single destination, traceroutes from any number of places to a single point, or even DNS lookups by region.

It's a product of the RIPE NCC's Research and Development department, and when I heard about it, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved. The whole thing is managed by way of thousands of tiny physical probes, seeded around the world, on server racks and family basements. The diversity of the entry points is what gives Atlas its strength: if you have need of a way to measure DNS requests from seven continents, this is how you can do it, and it's free to use.

My role in the project working there was two-fold: I built and maintained the RESTful API service along with the RIPE Atlas Sagan parsing library and was a big contributor to the RIPE Atlas Tools (Magellan) command line project. I also inherited the site front end with a view to make it more user-friendly. I also worked heavily on the economy system, and built some CMS features into the site.

Sadly, I left the RIPE NCC back in 2015, but Atlas is still going, and they're still building on much of what I contributed while I was there, which is pretty awesome.