SIGCOMM 2018 Hackathon Outcomes
M-Lab had the pleasure of attending the first ever SIGCOMM hackathon on August 25, 2018, at the Nokia Skypark headquarters in Budapest, Hungary. The hackathon, sponsored by Nokia, DECIX, and Netflix, invited network research faculty, students, and industry professionals from around the world to form teams and develop tools, new features or analyses during the Saturday following the SIGCOMM conference.
M-Lab 10 Year Anniversary Event
We’ve reached a point in human history where, for many of us, the internet has become a standard presence in our daily lives. In the United States, the internet is simply part of how many of us engage with the world. In other countries (and parts of this one), the internet remains unaffordable, unreliable, and inaccessible. The internet unites us in many ways, and at the center of work on the future of the internet is a dedicated community of experts exploring the questions that will move the internet to the next level of its evolution: What is an open internet? What is a healthy internet? What factors contribute to the internet ecosystem’s health?
Switch discard investigation for early 2018
On February 1st, 2018, during a regular data quality review, we identified an increase in switch discards at sites with 10Gbps equipment connected to 1Gbps uplinks. We used our switch telemetry data to assess whether there were any negative consequences for tests contained in our SideStream or NDT data sets, and then we used the same data sets to determine whether our remediation strategy had any negative effects. In both cases, we found no observable effects, indicating that everything was below the noise floor for Internet performance data.
SIGCOMM 2018 Hackathon
- When: Saturday, August 25, 2018
- Where: SIGCOMM, Budapest, Hungary
M-Lab will be at this year’s SIGCOMM hackathon in Budapest, Hungary. Check out the projects we’re hoping to work on with folks on the hackathon wiki.
M-Lab is Turning 10!
- When: Aug. 7, 2018 - Aug. 8, 2018, 9AM - 5PM
- Where: New America, 740 15th St NW #900, Washington, D.C. 20005
Measurement Lab is turning 10! On August 7 and 8, we look forward to gathering the Measurement Lab community to showcase how the platform has evolved, learn from you about how you are using M-Lab, and discuss how we plan for the next 10 years of measuring the Internet and providing public data to the world. So much has changed over the last 10 years (and that’s not just our expanding volume of longitudinal data!), come celebrate, brainstorm, analyze, and share with us.
New DISCO switch telemetry dataset
Since June 2016, M-Lab has collected high resolution switch telemetry for each M-Lab server and site uplink.
Originally designed to detect switch discards from server traffic microbursts, we now support the DIScard COllection (a.k.a. DISCO) dataset as a standard M-Lab BigQuery table: measurement-lab.base_tables.switch
Say Hello to Murakami
The Measurement Lab team has always tried to make it as easy as possible to run network measurements. Currently, most users run tests either directly from the M-Lab website, or through a 3rd party integration. Over the years, many users have requested the ability to run tests on a regular basis, e.g. daily or weekly to collect data over time. Today, we’re releasing a tool that will help you do just that.
Monitoring Interconnection Performance Since the Open Internet Order
Introduction
As a platform committed to producing empirical data for the public, Measurement Lab (M-Lab) has historically supplied regulators and other governmental entities with technical facts pertinent rule-making processes. In our February 2015 submission to the FCC’s Open Internet docket, we committed to research on the state of broadband and performance impact of interconnection in the United States. Earlier this year, the FCC began the process of re-evaluating its authority over broadband Internet services, and opened a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This blogpost is a shortened version comments that M-Lab filed in the docket regarding its continued research on the impact of interconnection on consumer broadband. The full filing in the FCC docket includes an elaboration of our research with additional supporting evidence and charts.
Transitioning to a New Backend Pipeline and Data Availability
M-Lab data is collected from distributed experiments hosted on servers all over the world, processed in a pipeline, and published for free in both raw and parsed (structured) formats. The back end processing component for this has served us well for many years, but it’s been showing its age recently. As M-Lab collects an increasing amount of data thanks to new partnerships, we have been concerned that it will not be as reliable.
New Opportunities for Test Deployment and Continued Analysis of Interconnection Performance
In late April, Internet2, with contributions from M-Lab developers, released an updated version of the Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT), M-Lab’s most widely deployed performance measurement test. In addition to improved stability, the updated version of NDT makes it possible to measure network performance from a web browser without the need for browser plugins. This change removes a layer of complexity and hassle for developers and users. Anyone interested in Internet measurement can now create their own NDT client targeted for specific user populations, regions, and research objectives, using only HTML and Javascript.
Internet Observatory Updates and Improvements
Last October, Measurement Lab released the Internet Observatory, a data-visualization tool that enables consumers, policymakers, and researchers to better understand the impact of ISP relationships on Internet access and performance. The Observatory provides easier access to M-Lab’s rich dataset on network performance to reproduce the analysis in our report on “ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance.”
M-Lab at RIPE
On Thursday Nov. 6, Collin Anderson gave a talk at the RIPE meeting in London. Collin has been immersed in the M-Lab data for some time, and helped lead the recently published technical report, ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance. He presented a lyrical overview of these research findings for the assembled crowd of network operators and researchers, which is archived on the RIPE website.
Research Updates: Beginning to Observe Network Management Practices as a Third Party
Prior to the publication of our recent report, ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance, we shared review copies with members of the research community, broadening the set of eyes on our methods and challenging our assertions. We received valuable feedback that allowed us to improve what we published, along with a list of research questions that we will be exploring and documenting over the coming months in our Research Updates series of blog posts adding insights to Research Reports.
ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance: Introducing A New M-Lab Consortium Technical Report
We are happy to announce the release of a long-term collaborative research effort using M-Lab’s data to understand how interconnection impacts end-user performance. The report, ISP Interconnection and its Impact on Consumer Internet Performance examines years of network measurement data from across the United States to determine the effects of network interconnection on the Internet performance of customers subscribing to specific access ISPs. Alongside this report, we are also pleased to release the Internet Observatory – a dynamic data visualization tool that will allow consumers, policymakers, and researchers to better understand the impact of ISP relationships on their own Internet access and performance. The Internet Observatory will be updated regularly, allowing future monitoring and comparison against past performance.