Google Launches Measurement Lab

Google has launched an effort called Measurement Lab that is aimed at
making it easier to measure how ISPs manipulate subscriber Internet
connections, Google chief evangelist Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the
TCP/IP protocol that underlies the Internet, announced Wednesday.

When an Internet application doesn't work as expected or your
connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem
caused by your broadband ISP, the application, your PC, or something
else? It can be difficult for experts, let alone average Internet
users, to address this sort of question today.

Last year we asked a small group of academics about ways to advance
network research and provide users with tools to test their broadband
connections. Today Google, the New America Foundation's Open
Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, and academic
researchers are taking the wraps off of Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an
open platform that researchers can use to deploy Internet measurement
tools.

Researchers are already developing tools that allow users to, among
other things, measure the speed of their connection, run diagnostics,
and attempt to discern if their ISP is blocking or throttling
particular applications. These tools generate and send some data
back-and-forth between the user's computer and a server elsewhere on
the Internet. Unfortunately, researchers lack widely-distributed
servers with ample connectivity. This poses a barrier to the accuracy
and scalability of these tools. Researchers also have trouble sharing
data with one another.