First in Pakistan: COMSATS Hosts RIPE Atlas Anchor for Optimized Network Monitoring

COMSATS Internet Services (CIS) becomes the first ISP in Pakistan to host RIPE Atlas Anchor sponsored by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC).

The RIPE Atlas project is an Internet measurement network that employs a global network of probes and anchors for the real time measurement of Internet connectivity. The Ripe Atlas Anchor is a more powerful version of the probe with a much greater measurement capacity.

The anchor helps gain valuable information about the health of network by measuring ping, traceroute, DNS, and HTTP(S). In addition, the anchor acts as a powerful regional target for the RIPE Atlas Network to handle a large number of measurements originating from nearby probes.

On this achievement, M. Amir Malik, CEO of COMSATS Internet Services said,

“CIS was the pioneer Internet Service provider in Pakistan, and continuing with this legacy, we are the first to initiate the installation of the RIPE Atlas Anchor with the outstanding support of APNIC.

This will help in enhancing our integration and system to guarantee that our clients in Pakistan get the best internet experience.

We will now have comprehensive and accurate information about the internet, and can investigate network glitches in real time at the anchor, understand the precise issue, and resolve it immediately.”

This accomplishment allows the Internet community in Pakistan to now get on-request individual estimations from the RIPE Atlas anchor that will give instantaneous information on their queries.

Atlas Anchor is the next generation active Internet measurement network initiated by RIPE NCC and sponsored by APNIC in the Asia Pacific region. It consists of thousands of measurement probes distributed around the globe. Anchors provide valuable information about the local and regional connectivity and reachability of the Internet, and the large amount of data they collect is made available to everyone.

Pakistan network operators can use these measurements to understand the health of Internet around their network. Network operators can also measure latency to their multiple locations and their customer experience with different sites/locations that help resolve any issues and visualize network outages.

If a customer mentions about a slow Internet connection, or packet loss and/or jitter, we can now verify against accurate data and troubleshoot connectivity issues in real time at this Anchor in Pakistan, understand the issue with a lot more clarity and accuracy, and solve it instantly.

Duncan Macintosh, APNIC Development Director said “As of today the Internet community in Pakistan can get real time measurement of the Nation’s Internet infrastructure from within the country and outside. APNIC is very pleased to have COMSATS cooperation in hosting an Anchor in Pakistan.” Macintosh further added “The ‘Atlas Anchor’ provides an unprecedented understanding of the state of a country’s Internet infrastructure in real time. All the data collected by the Anchor is made available to everyone for free to do their own analysis to help build better Internet infrastructure in the region”.

APNIC is aiming to build the world’s largest Internet measurement network initiated by RIPE NCC. As of today, APNIC-supported Atlas Anchors are deployed in Sri Lanka, Singapore, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Currently, Atlas Anchors support ping, traceroute, DNS, SSL, IPv6 reachability, DNSSEC validation, and recently NTP measurements.

Server is online and reachable now at following public links:


  • it is good to such technological development taking place in pakistan (y)

  • “Pakistan network operators can use these measurements to understand the health of Internet around their network.”

    PTCL will probably be diagnosed with Ebola.


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