ampr upstreams post

content/blog/2024-04-26-leapmotion-photography.md

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+---
+title: Infra-red photography with a Leap Motion Controller
+description: 
+date: 2024-04-26
+tags:
+  - hardware
+draft: true
+extra:
+  auto_center_images: true
+aliases:
+  - /blog/leapmotion-photography
+---
+
+Ah, Leap Motion...
+
+Back in 2013, a company called *~~OcuSpec~~.. ~~Leap Motion~~.. ~~Ultrahaptics~~.. Ultraleap* released their first motion tracking device, the Leap Motion Controller.
+
+![The Leap Motion Controller](/images/posts/leapmotion-photography/controller.jpg)
+
+I recall first seeing one in elementary school. 
+
+Looking back, I have no memory of what it was being used for, but I remember being fascinated with the diagnostics tool that showed the raw hand tracking data streaming from the device.
+
+![A screenshot of the visualizer](/images/posts/leapmotion-photography/leap-visualizer.png)
+
+## What does one actually do with one of these devices?
+
+Well, you see, thats a great question. Its probably also the reason why the company doesn't seem to be doing as well as people thought it would in the first place.
+
+There are very few practical applications for a non-haptic hand tracker. That being said, a few well-known demos do exist:
+
+- Hans Willem Gijzel used a controller to control Ableton (presumably through an M4L device)

content/blog/2024-04-27-ampr-upstreams.md

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+---
+title: Who are the upstreams for AMPRNet?
+description: 
+date: 2024-04-27
+tags:
+  - networking
+draft: false
+extra:
+  auto_center_images: true
+aliases:
+  - /blog/ampr-upstreams
+---
+
+I happened to be poking through the [AMPRNet](https://ampr.org) gateway list today, and pretty much out of nowhere came up with the question: *I wonder what networks most commonly house AMPR gateways?*
+
+So, in this short post, I shall set out to answer that question.
+
+## A brief overview
+
+Feel free to read about AMPRNet yourself online. There's lots of great information floating around.
+
+For anyone looking for a TLDR before continuing, you can basically think of AMPRNet as an ad-hoc mesh of gateways that act as core routers for tiny slices of IP space. These gateways share routing information with each other and form a mixed-topology network that spans the globe.
+
+## What gateways exist?
+
+Firstly, in order to figure out what networks house gateways, I need to know what gateways exist.
+
+AMPR operators have access to a little API that allows us to query for a list of all active gateways, so thats where I shall start.
+
+If you happen to be following along at home, heres the commands I am using to get my list of gateway IPs:
+
+```bash
+AMPR_API_TOKEN="your-api-token-here"
+http get https://portal.ampr.org/api/v1/encap/routes \
+  "Authorization: Bearer $AMPR_API_TOKEN" \
+  "Accept: application/json" \
+  | jq ".encap[].gatewayIP" \
+  | tr -d '"' \
+  | sort \
+  | uniq
+```
+
+This returns a nicely sorted list of approximately 650 unique gateways.
+
+## Where are they?
+
+Now that I have a list of IPs, I just put them into a file (`/tmp/ips` in my case) and asked the [BGP.tools API](https://bgp.tools/kb/api) for info about them.
+
+```bash
+echo "begin\n$(cat /tmp/ips)\nend" | nc bgp.tools 43 | tee /tmp/bgp-tools-result
+```
+
+This gives me a very long list of ASNs for each gateway, which I can then process.
+
+Taking the `/tmp/bgp-tools-result` file that the previous command generated, I can now run the following command to get a list of unique ASNs:
+
+```bash
+cat /tmp/bgp-tools-result \
+  | cut -d "|" -f 7 \
+  | sort \
+  | uniq -c \
+  | sort -n -r
+```
+
+## The results
+
+At the time of writing, here's the distribution of gateways by Autonomous System:
+
+| Count | Autonomous System                                 |
+|-------|---------------------------------------------------|
+| 46    | Comcast Cable Communications, LLC                 |
+| 25    | Charter Communications Inc                        |
+| 23    | The Constant Company, LLC                         |
+| 23    | AT&T Services, Inc.                               |
+| 22    | Verizon Business                                  |
+| 16    | Charter Communications                            |
+| 15    | Akamai (Linode)                                   |
+| 14    | Free SAS                                          |
+| 11    | Amazon.com, Inc.                                  |
+| 10    | Lumen (ex. Qwest)                                 |
+| 10    | Cox Communications Inc.                           |
+| 10    | Bell Canada                                       |
+| 9     | Ote SA (Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation) |
+| 9     | DigitalOcean LLC                                  |
+| *249* | *Various Others*                                  |
+
+<br>
+
+**Note:** the *Various Others* row represents nearly 230 ASes that only host 1 gateway, and a smaller handful that host a few more.