Region Meshes

Region Meshes is an interactive tool for analysing intra-region routing paths to understand IXP utilisation and in-region traffic patterns. It uses RIPE Atlas traceroute data to show how traffic flows between probes within a country or region, highlighting whether paths stay local and whether they traverse Internet Exchange Points (IXPs).

Overview

Region Meshes helps you understand regional routing by providing:

• A matrix (grid) view of all probe-to-probe paths within a region
• A geographic map view with great-circle arcs showing routing paths
• A Sankey flow diagram view of traffic between ASNs
• Path classification by IXP usage and domestic/international routing
• Full traceroute inspection for each path
• Raw data downloads for every month and region

Where the Data Comes From

All measurement data used by Region Meshes is collected by RIPE Atlas.

At the beginning of each month a new round of measurements runs. For each region, every public probe is included in a full traceroute mesh — each probe traceroutes towards every other probe in the region. Because of the way RIPE Atlas schedules this, these are one-off traceroute measurements, each targeting a single probe and involving all the other probes in the region as sources. Every measurement is tagged (system-region-mesh and system-region-mesh-<region>) so the complete set is easy to retrieve later.

In most practical cases a "region" is a country, but it can also be a group of countries with an agreed-on definition and a reasonable number of probes — africa is currently available as such a region. For a multi-country region, the paths RIPE Atlas can see between those countries are discovered as well.

The 50-Probe Selection

Measuring every probe against every other probe produces far more paths than can be usefully displayed — and far more than can be annotated economically. So after the measurements have run, up to 50 of the most diverse probes in the region are selected, spread across as many different networks as possible. Everything downstream uses only those probes, as both sources and targets of the paths shown. Regions with fewer than 50 public probes use all of them.

Only the results for that selection are then annotated with:

• ASN information
• Reverse DNS name
• Whether the IP belongs to a known IXP
• Geolocation, from various geolocation providers and other sources

Results from the probes that were not selected are not discarded and never need re-measuring — they are part of the same measurements and remain available from RIPE Atlas. What they lack is the per-hop metadata enrichment above, which is only produced for the 50 selected probes.

For a fuller account of the design and the reasoning behind it, see the RIPE Labs article Introducing Region Meshes: Visualising Intra-Region Routing Paths.

Getting Started

1. Select a Month from the dropdown (most recent data appears first)
2. Select a Region (country) — the dropdown is searchable by name or country code
3. Choose IPv4 or IPv6 (buttons are disabled if no data exists for that address family)
4. Click Load Data to fetch and process the measurement data

Once loaded, the tool displays path data across three views: Grid, Map, and Flow.

Path Classification

By default, IXP data only mode is enabled. In this mode, hop locations are determined exclusively from IXP data, where the physical location of each exchange is known with certainty. Every probe-to-probe path is classified into one of three categories:

Category	Colour	Description
IXP, In-Region	Green	IXP is within the target region
IXP, Out-of-Region	Blue	IXP is outside the target region
No IXP	Grey	No IXP present in the path — region classification is not attempted

Extended Classification (IXP Data Only Off)

Toggling IXP data only off enables additional region resolution using rDNS and IP geolocation. This expands the classification to four categories by distinguishing domestic and international routing for non-IXP paths as well:

Category	Colour	Description
IXP, In-Region	Green	Path uses an IXP and stays within the region — the ideal case
IXP, Out-of-Region	Blue	Path uses an IXP but leaves the region at some point
No IXP, In-Region	Yellow	Path stays within the region but does not use an IXP
No IXP, Out-of-Region	Red	Path leaves the region and does not use an IXP

WARNING

Non-IXP region resolution relies on rDNS and IP geolocation, which can be inaccurate. Keep IXP data only mode enabled when you need higher confidence in the results.

Views

Grid View

The grid displays a source-probe (rows) by destination-probe (columns) matrix. Each cell represents one traceroute path and is coloured according to its path classification.

• Hover a cell to see a popup with path details — source/destination ASN, IXP info, and hop summary
• Click a cell to pin the popup and view the full traceroute with per-hop details
• ASN header labels link to the corresponding probe detail page
• Cells are dimmed when a filter is active and the path does not match, or when its category is toggled off

Map View

The map plots probe locations and draws great-circle arcs for each routing path, colour-coded by category.

• Hover an arc to highlight it and see path details
• Click an arc to pin its popup — all other arcs are hidden and the selected path is highlighted in white, with country outlines for involved countries shown
• IXP markers appear as coloured circles at exchange locations; hover for a tooltip, click to pin the path popup
• Overlapping paths: when multiple paths share the same arc, a selection menu appears listing each path as "AS#### → AS####" with a category badge — hover to preview, click to pin

Category Toggles

Below the map, category chips control which arc types are visible:

• Click a chip to show only that category
• If only one category is visible, clicking it toggles it off and restores all others
• The Total chip toggles all categories on or off

Flow View

The Sankey (flow) diagram shows traffic paths between source ASNs on the left and destination ASNs on the right. Link width and colour represent the number and classification of paths flowing between ASN pairs.

• Hover a link to see path details
• Click a link to pin the popup
• Click an ASN node to open the probe detail page

Filtering

The filter bar below the controls accepts search terms to narrow the displayed paths. Type a term and press comma or wait briefly to create a filter chip. Multiple chips are combined (all must match).

Supported filter terms:

• ASN — e.g. AS3333 or 3333
• IP address — matches against hop IPs in the traceroute
• IXP name — partial match on exchange names (or type ixp to match any IXP path)
• Probe ID — numeric probe identifier
• Country code — two-letter code matching hop or foreign countries

The toggle button next to the filter switches between include (show only matching paths) and exclude (hide matching paths) mode.

Filters apply across all three views. In the grid, non-matching cells are dimmed rather than removed, preserving the matrix layout.

Path Popup Details

When a path is pinned (by clicking a cell, arc, or flow link), the popup shows:

• Source and destination probe IDs (linked) and ASN names
• Measurement links — direct links to the Khipu visualisation, the measurement page, and (from grid and flow views) a Map link that switches to the map view with the path highlighted
• Classification chips — Via IXP / No IXP, In-Region / Out-of-Region
• IXP badges — names and countries of exchanges in the path
• Full traceroute table — each hop with IP (linked to RIPEstat), hostname, ASN, RTT, and badges for IXP or foreign-country hops

Pinned popups can be dragged by their header and dismissed by clicking the close button, pressing Escape, or clicking outside.

URL-Based State Sharing

All view state is encoded in the URL, making it easy to share a specific view:

• Route parameters: country, address family, active view tab — e.g. /use-cases/region-meshes/nl/v4/map
• Query parameters:
  • date — selected month
  • ixp — IXP-only mode (0 = off, default is on)
  • filter — active filter chips (comma-separated)
  • filterNot — exclude mode (1 = enabled)
  • path — pinned path selection (e.g. 12345-67890)

The URL updates automatically as you interact with the tool. Opening a shared URL restores the full state, loading the data automatically if available.

Raw Data

Everything Region Meshes displays is published as plain files, so the analysis can be reproduced or taken further offline. The archive lives at ftp.ripe.net/ripe/atlas/region-meshes/ and is organised by month and region:

region-meshes/
  2026-08-01/
    index.json                                  <- regions and address families available
    NL.mesh/
      probes.jsonl.gz
      msm_data_NL_2026-08-01_ipv4.jsonl.gz
      result_data_NL_2026-08-01_ipv4.jsonl.gz
      ip_data_NL_2026-08-01_ipv4.jsonl.gz
      viz_data_NL_2026-08-01_ipv4.json.gz
      ... and the same four files for ipv6

Region folders are named after the mesh (NL.mesh, DE.mesh, africa.mesh), and the per-address-family files repeat the mesh name, the month and ipv4/ipv6. All files are gzipped; the .jsonl ones hold one JSON object per record.

File	Contents
index.json	One entry per region and address family for that month, with the number of measurements used (nmsms). This is what populates the Region dropdown.
probes.jsonl.gz	Every public probe in the region, with full probe metadata (address, ASN, prefix, coordinates, tags, status). This is the pool the mesh was measured over — not just the 50 selected probes.
msm_data_*.jsonl.gz	The measurements used for the visualisation: target_probe_id, msm_id, target_ip and the countries covered — one row per selected target probe.
result_data_*.jsonl.gz	Raw RIPE Atlas traceroute results for the selected probes, in the standard result format returned by the API.
ip_data_*.jsonl.gz	Per-hop IP metadata: ASN, reverse DNS name, IXP name/country/city, geolocation country/city and coordinates. Produced only for the selected probes.
viz_data_*.json.gz	The precomputed dataset this tool loads: probes, per-path hop records with metadata already merged in, and summary statistics.

The archive is also reachable from the tool itself. The Raw Data Archive link in the page header opens the top of the archive, and the dataset info panel (the ⓘ button next to the fullscreen control) links directly to each file for the month, region and address family currently on screen.

Getting Results for All Probes

The result and metadata files in the archive cover the 50-probe selection only (probes.jsonl.gz is the exception — it lists every probe in the region). To work with the rest of the mesh — every public probe in the region — go back to the measurements themselves, which are tagged in RIPE Atlas:

• system-region-mesh — all region mesh measurements
• system-region-mesh-<region> — a single region, e.g. system-region-mesh-nl or system-region-mesh-africa

Browse them in the measurement list, or fetch them from the API:

https://atlas.ripe.net/api/v2/measurements/?tags=system-region-mesh-nl&sort=-id

Each of those measurements targets one probe and has every other public probe in the region as a source, so filtering their results differently gives you paths for probes outside the selection without scheduling anything new. Those results carry no ASN, rDNS, IXP or geolocation annotation — that step only runs for the 50 selected probes.

Common Use Cases

Assessing IXP Utilisation in a Country

1. Select the target country and load data
2. Review the category counts in the statistics bar — the ratio of green (IXP In-Region) to blue (IXP Out-of-Region) and grey (No IXP) indicates how well local IXPs are utilised
3. Use the category chips on the map to isolate IXP vs non-IXP paths
4. Click individual arcs to inspect which exchanges are being used and where they are located

Identifying Routing Detours

1. Load data for your region and switch to the Map view
2. Look for blue arcs (IXP Out-of-Region) — these represent paths that leave the country to reach an IXP abroad, a clear sign of routing detours
3. Click an arc to inspect the full traceroute and see which foreign IXP is being used
4. For a more complete picture, toggle IXP data only off to enable the extended four-category classification — red arcs (No IXP, Out-of-Region) reveal paths that leave the country without using any IXP at all
5. Note the ASNs involved — these may benefit from local peering or membership at a domestic IXP

Comparing IPv4 and IPv6 Routing

1. Load data for a country with IPv4 selected
2. Note the category distribution and review paths of interest
3. Switch to IPv6 and load data again
4. Compare the category ratios — differences may indicate that IPv6 peering is less established in the region or that fewer IXPs support IPv6

Investigating Specific ASN Routing

1. Load data for your region
2. Use the filter bar to enter the ASN of interest (e.g. AS3333)
3. Review which paths involve that ASN across all three views
4. Pin individual paths to inspect full traceroutes and IXP usage