Google M-Labs: Your Personal Traffic Cop

BitTorrent broadband Google Measurement Labs

Writing on the Official Google Blog, none other than Vint Cerf, currently Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, is taking on the issue of throttled broadband connections.

"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?" wrote Cerf.

To that end, Google and Cerf, along with Stephen Stuart, principal engineer for Google, are making public the M-Labs project, which was quietly started by the search engine giant last year. The goal of the program is to develop open-source tools that allow researchers and regular Internet users to measure the speed of their connection, run diagnostics and determine if an ISP is deliberately throttling traffic to a broadband connection.

"These tools generate and send some data back and forth between the user's computer and a server elsewhere on the Internet," wrote Cerf.

One of Google's main contributions to the M-Labs project is the resources it will bring, including 36 servers distributed between the U.S. and Europe. Those servers are aimed at breaking down some of the barriers that researches encounter when trying to capture this kind of data: the need for widely distributed servers and connectivity, and the ability to share data with one another.

"M-Labs aims to address these problems. Over the course of early 2009, Google will provide researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe," wrote Cerf. "All data collected via M-Labs will be made publicly available for other researchers to build on. M-Labs is intended to be a truly community-based effort, and we welcome the support of other companies, institutions, researchers and users that want to provide servers, tools or other resources that can help the platform flourish."

M-Labs, which is a collaboration between New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the Planet Lab Consortium, academic researchers and Google itself, currently has three tools that researchers and interested parties can use to test their connection. The tools are in the early stage of development, and M-Labs hopes to bring on more partners for the project.

The Network Diagnostic Tool is aimed at testing a broadband connection, providing diagnostics of problems that might be limiting speed. Glasnost tests whether or not BitTorrent is being blocked or slowed. And Network Path and Application Diagnosis looks to diagnose problems that occur within the last mile of broadband networks.

The M-Labs project does touch on Net neutrality issues, but Cerf, Stuart and Google hope that regardless of a personal stance, everyone can agree that Internet users deserve to be well-informed about their broadband service.

"Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet and, by advancing network research in this area, M-Labs aims to help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet," wrote Cerf.