Resources on the meta-data API

The meta-data API concerns itself with probes and measurements.

The Probe object

The probes resource holds one or more Probe objects.

They describe some physical properties of a probe, e.g. the location and some network properties of the probe, like the IP prefix and address, in which ASN they are located. A Probe object also holds status data about the probe, like its current connection status and its connectivity to the RIPE Atlas network.

Finally a Probe object can have one or multiple tags.

The documentation for the Probe is here.

The Measurement object

A Measurement in the context of the RIPE Atlas API is an object holding meta-data about one ("one-off") or a series of actual measurements performed by one or multiple probes on the RIPE Atlas network.

A Measurement holds information about the the type of measurement that was, is or should be performed by the probes. Examples of measurement types are HTTP or Traceroute. It holds the settings for the measurement, called the measurement specification in RIPE Atlas terminology. This specification is a mixture of base attributes, available for all types of measurements, and type-specific attributes. Examples of such attributes are packets, method or interval.

Furthermore a Measurement object also holds the meta-data for the time-series of measurements to be performed by the probes, like the start and stop time of the measurements and the link to the streaming API resource that holds the result of the performed measurements.

A Measurement object also holds information about the status of the measurement, e.g. if it is currently running, stopped and so on.

Finally the Measurement object holds information about the probes. This information can be about requested probes, called participation request in RIPE Atlas terminology, or about actual probes that were involved in the performed measurements.

The data that was passed in to the RIPE Atlas API to request the creation of a measurement is called a measurement definition.

You can read more about the creation of measurements here.