(Answering this particular mail but answering the question in general)

Hardware probes are designed to be mostly "plug and forget" - they self-configure and when new firmwares are available they are automatically upgraded. Some hosts like this a lot. Admittedly, the different generations are not equal - v3s in particular may need more attention...

Software probes need a bit more hand-holding from the host - the OS and the networking part, and occasional upgrade of the firmware package. VMs are fine as well. This is obviously more for those who know these bits and are willing/happy to nurture the OS. In return there's much more visibility on what's going on "inside"; after all it's an open source package.

At the moment we don't support BSDs. This *may* change in the future as a byproduct of internal technical changes, but I cannot say for certain.

I'm happy to put such words in the FAQ for posterity.

Regards,

Robert

On Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 7:53 PM Sulev-Madis Silber via ripe-atlas <ripe-atlas@ripe.net> wrote:

btw, has anyone ran sw probe on fbsd? last time i heard it requires complete rewrite. unsure. maybe linux compat jail? could also run vm of course. i can't recall ripe providing vm images. but isn't vm like bad idea to test networks. latency. jitter?

also, previously hw probes are like ripe owned and managed propery to avoid measurement skew

what about sw ones? there's no control there. unsure tho how many try to screw with atlas on purpose, be it hw or sw...
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