Troubleshooting

The probe doesn't have any lights on. Is it dead?

Once you connect the probe on both connections (Ethernet and USB), it should turn on quickly. The green "link" LED should come on when the Ethernet link is established. The orange "data" LED will blink as the probe sends and receives packets. If this is not the case then please make sure that both connections are fine (for example, the USB really gives power, the Ethernet port is active, etc.). If the probe still doesn't look like it's on, please contact us (opens new window).

I just connected my probe and the lights are on, but it is still listed as "disconnected" on the list of public probes. What is happening?

When you plug in the probe, it will take some time before enough data is collected and the probe is listed as connected. If this is the first time you plug in your probe (or it was disconnected for a long time), it's possible that it will immediately upgrade its firmware, which can take longer. Please check back a few hours later.

The lights are on but I still can't register my probe, or the system says my probe is not connected ("never seen"). What can I do?

Please double check that your probe received an IP address and DNS information through DHCP, and that there's no firewall rule or MAC address filtering blocking its access to the Internet.

I want to share my Internet connection of my Mac (Mini, iMac, MacBook, etc.) and run the probe on that, but it doesn't seem to work. What can I do?

Some RIPE Atlas users who use "Internet Sharing" of OS X (10.4 and 10.5) have reported this issue. A workaround that seems to work in all cases that we know of, is to change reply_threshold_seconds to 0. See this article (opens new window) for more details.

I see 100% packet loss on all my probes to labs.ripe.net. Is this expected?

Since early 2012, ICMP rate limiting has been enforced near RIPE Labs, leading to these ping results. Soon after this we discontinued this measurement.

I found a probe that is wrongly geolocated. How can I report this?

Please let us know by sending an email to atlas@ripe.net. We will flag the probe, assigning a tag system-geoloc-disputed. We also notify the host of the probe who can either correct the geolocation or confirm that - despite the dispute - the probe's location is correct (in which case the system-geoloc-confirmed is added instead).