Call for alpha testers: A new global network testing service - open source
Hey all, I recently started working on a new network testing service called Globalping and wanted to gather some feedback before it goes into a beta state.
You might be familiar with my previous work at perfops/dnsperf/cdnperf. Unfortunately those services were commercial with VC backing and inevitably they failed.
Yet I still think that there is a place for such a service, but this time without the limitations that come with a for-profit company. Specifically:
- Free*
- Open source
- Superb user experience
I am aware that RIPE Atlas also exists but I never was a big fan of it. I believe we can build a nice competitor with modern technologies, a better API, improved UX and move and iterate much faster without the bureaucracy of such large organizations. At the end of the day the more competition the better for the user.
It consists of a few components:
The API itself that users will use to interact with the network. We will build a large amount of tools as well, so no need for everyone to interact with the REST API itself - https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping
The probe container. The code that connects to the API and waits for commands to execute - https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping-probe
Explore it all now https://github.com/jsdelivr#the-globalping-platform
Current status:
- Lots of testing and building based on previous experience and assumptions
- The backend is in place and working. We have around 450 online probes ready to run tests
- The website is in progress, we have a designer preparing the first web tools
- The CLI tool doesn't have a dev yet but its a high priority
- Firmware for hardware probes is being tested. Hardware probes are a fun project that I hope will motivate people to become GitHub Sponsors to get a cool metal ARM device.
Why this time it wont fail:
This time it's being launched as a project of jsDelivr, a CDN that has existing for 10 years now, used by millions of people daily. There is no pressure of x10 growth year after year and we will rely on the community to help us out.
Instead of renting thousands of VMs we will seed the network and will work with sponsors and regular users to get as many people as possible to run our probes in the networks they have access. e.g. own VMs or home labs.
We will offer very generous free plans but will also introduce limits that can be bypassed by becoming a GitHub Sponsor https://github.com/sponsors/jsdelivr
This way we hope to motivate people to directly contribute to the development of all of our projects and help us sustain our activities.
Demo and testing
The system is in alpha state, stuff will break and APIs will change, I want to gather as much feedback as possible early-on while we can still make huge changes without impacting any real users.
Simple demo by devs for devs (designs are coming soon) - https://api.globalping.io/demo/
Check out the "magic" location type too. You can enter almost anything in there and get an output. e.g. hetzner, germany, california, eastern europe...
I invite everyone to join our GitHub projects and open issues with ideas, bugs, feedback and command on existing issues.
TL:DR: I made a new service that runs ping/mtr/traceroute/dns/http commands from globally distributed probes. It's in alpha state, please test 
https://github.com/jsdelivr#the-globalping-platform
Thank you!
Comments
Best of luck
Its good to see that even after first failure, you still found a way to share your work with world. Good luck
Thank you both for the support
Great idea, fan of your work @jimaek. Keep it up!
Nice C&C/DDOS infrastructure, hehe.
But if paid devs couldn't make a go, why would free labour of probably lesser quality?
We're doing everything possible to prevent any kind of abuse. If you have a specific way to ddos someone using us then it would be great if you could open an issue about it
The difference is not paid labour but the goals. The goal before was to make as much money as possible as fast as possible to satisfy the businesses goals and investors. That meant charging more, hiding cool features behind paywalls, building what enterprises needed and not smaller users...
Now it's about building a good service people want to use. It's a lot more aligned with what the community needs. Also we do pay our core developers and the quality is not up to question, it's always a high priority for me.
If you get firmware (for some easily homeflashable) devices I can buy [from you, from China, w/e] and can run powered from router USB (just like Atlas probe) I will gladly deploy one at my home network. RPi prices went fucking crazy and don't really feel like buying one just for this
I love the concept. I liked PerfOps' API for this, and I remember playing with it when there was a free quota (perhaps it was during a beta), sorry to hear that didn't end in success.
I'll certainly run a some probes myself. It would be really cool if there was a way to tie a probe to a user, perhaps with some type of leaderboard or stats page (edit: or limit increases). Is there a way to get metrics from a probe?
ps: The link to the hw firmware at the bottom of https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping-probe 404s.
We do plan to add a dashboard where people could manage their probes, credits, API keys and validate themselves as GitHub Sponsors.
We will of course compensate users that connect their own probes with higher limits. But we're not there yet
Yeah the firmware and CLI are empty repos for now and private because of that, once they are ready for testing I will open both.
Some updates since the last time:
Since you posted this I've been really wanting to use it in a project and I finally got around to starting something tonight (testing object storage files to gather metrics, akin to https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/3452406/#Comment_3452406)
The new HTTP test is quite nice, and very fast. In the time it takes to get the measurement its usually already done (unless the endpoint being tested is slow). I appreciate that it supports HEAD, divides up the timings for the request, as well as returning TLS information.
I love it, and I'm sure I'll think of uses for it all the time.
PS: https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping/blob/master/docs/measurement/get.md#success-response links to measurement-response.md instead of just response.md
Awesome, thanks for the feedback and using it in your product! It's a great use case
Please note that we're working on some breaking API changes https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping/pull/158 but it should be as simple as changing the names of a few parameters.
It's our last chance to change the API before going live
After that it will be production stable and won't break or change anymore.
If you have any feature ideas or requests feel free to PM me or open an issue in our GitHub
GlobalPing.org is available
We own globalping.io for the API, but the landing page and information will all be under jsdelivr.com
But just in case I just bought .org as well
More updates:
Hi,
i got my globalping device yesterday and installed it today.
Sometimes i can login with "ssh [email protected]
After some time im getting this error message:
Could not chdir to home directory /home/logs: No such file or directory
Error: No such container: globalping-probe
Also not shown on https://api.globalping.io/demo/
It needs some minutes to let me login again and shows up on the api website.
This is the "normal" output when its shown on https://api.globalping.io/demo/
Could not chdir to home directory /home/logs: No such file or directory
Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
0 added, 0 removed; done.
Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d...
done.
Checking for the latest version
Current version 0.10.1
Latest version 0.11.0
Start self-update process
Self-update finished
[2023-01-25 23:17:25] [INFO] [695] [general] Start probe version 0.11.0 in a production mode
[2023-01-25 23:17:26] [DEBUG] [695] [general] connection to API established
How often does this happen? Its probably the random weekly restart, its not a bug
Just read about this project - really awesome! Can help with a probe in Portugal if needed.
That would be great, you can start our containers on any server you control. Or I can send you a free hardware probe too. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/182613/jimaek-is-giving-away-20-globalping-probes-through-december-5-worldwide-enter-to-win/p1
Nice work body !
The free hardware probe would be best. I'll colocate it in our office :-), 500Mbps, Vodafone FTTH.
I have filled the form there.
Cheers
Its happening about every 30 min or so not weekly. Since i turned it on 2 days ago it restarted 20 times or more.
Ok, I'll reply in Github, thanks for reporting it
Our CLI is finally live!
https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping-cli
Consider installing it and playing around. Any feedback is appreciated!
I have already made a list of improvements it needs https://github.com/jsdelivr/globalping-cli/issues
Plus its missing the docs, if someone would be interested to write a draft and send a PR that would be awesome