Hi Ernst,
Just recently I realized that a probe can be labeled as “non-public”. Why is this allowed? Atlas is a community effort. Why are probe “owners” allowed to have benefits from using Atlas without sharing data?
Probes marked as as non-public have some of their details hidden, notably it is not easy to find their exact IP address. However, they are still participating in all available built-in measurements and are available for scheduling for user-defined measurements, and all data are available publicly for public measurements (but see the recent proposal regarding non-public *measurements* at https://labs.ripe.net/author/kistel/five-proposals-for-a-better-ripe-atlas/ . The hosts of "non-public" probes are therefore contributing very nearly as much to the network as everybody else. :-) Regards, Chris Amin RIPE NCC