Google M-Lab Empowering The User
Vince Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, has announced the introduction of a new service on the Google Blog. The Measurement Lab will give end users and researchers remote access to a number of advanced network diagnostic tools to simplify the task of network analysis. Many of the individual programs are also available as downloads to be installed (so far only on Linux).
From the post:
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.
One of the more interesting tools for the end user is Glasnost, which “attempts to detect whether your Internet access provider is performing application-specific traffic shaping.”
Of course, searching for packet shaping is just scratching the surface, and there are plently more tools for more complex analysis. At the moment, The Measurement Lab is building up quite the digital line up of people trying to use the tools. Check it out if you’re curious to see what’s happening on your network.
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