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Google and Friends Release Net Neutrality Measuring Tools
angry tapir writes "Google and a group of partners have released a set of tools designed to help broadband customers and researchers measure performance of Internet connections. The set of tools, at MeasurementLab.net, includes a network diagnostic tool, a network path diagnostic tool and a tool to measure whether the user's broadband provider is slowing BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic. Coming soon to the M-Lab applications is a tool to determine whether a broadband provider is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic, and a tool to determine whether a provider is degrading certain users or applications. 'Transparency is our goal,' said Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist at Google and a co-developer of TCP/IP. 'Our intent is to make more [information] visible for all who are interested in the way the network is functioning at all layers.'"
This is great, I'm sending this link around to friends and family on different networks now.
Not because I want to know, but because I want them to read it, see their problems in b&w, and be aware of what their ISP's are doing... without me preaching to the deaf.
6'1"
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7.5% tissue replaced with CAT6 cable
As a Comcast customer, I heartily look forward to trying out these tools on my Comcastic(tm) connection at home!
On another note, I also look forward to carrier-grade NAT in the near future, when Comcast decides they want to stay with IPv4 forever!
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What do they mean by slowing? You can "slow" Bittorrent by shaping or by giving it less priority? Again, is this being confused on purpose? To what end? From my post on the Cox story:
One issue is over subscription. Unless a company is large enough to have lots and lots of peer connections, your ISP is probably over subscribes their upstream connections. This is fine, because on average traffic goes in bursts. The problem is that everything starts to break down once you have a small pool of people running P2P 24/7. These people are just as greedy as the ISP's they complain about. They want a huge "dedicated" pipe, but have others subsidize it. I have no issue with someone like Cox de-prioritizing their traffic so that the people that just want their Vonage to work don't get squashed out. This is a temporary solution because the ISP will eventually have to up their pipe speed.
The other issue is granting certain companies privileges on a network and penalizing other companies they don't like (e.g. penalize Vonage and prioritize a VoIP partner). This should be illegal. This is a clear case of violation of neutrality. At the same time, the company should be able to directly peer with a company (say a VoIP provider) without violating the law. This may seem unfair, but peering has been a perfectly valid way of reducing traffic on a transit connection.
The last issue is traffic caps. I don't think there should be a law against it as long as the company is upfront about it. Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service. We *want* people to afford Internet services. The market chooses. If you are a big user of P2P, then you will have to go with another ISP that does not have caps. You may have to pay more for this privilege... sorry, but that is how things go. The market must have a way to manage scarcity of resources. If you want more of a resource, you will have to pay for it even it if looks the same (e.g. 5mbit from Cox versus 5mbit from FiOS).
Don't confuse QoS with net neutrality. As long as the QoS is applied equally, then it should be perfectly fine.
And this guy too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FIfu7B3sZY
While I don't really think this is talking about neutrality per se, I figured I should post this because it makes me ROFL.
The set of tools, at MeasurementLab.net, includes a network diagnostic tool, a network path diagnostic tool and a tool to measure whether the user's broadband provider is slowing BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic.
Will there be a tool to tell me if Digital Max is really my friend in the digital world, or if he's just bullshitting me?
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
It's the great equalizer. No one can control this thing. The rules are enforced by the people: give us quality or get out.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
These tools are no doubt going to be very useful to everyone that uses p2p software for _any_ purpose.
The flipside is that as an administrator of a workplace network i can also use these tools to ascertain whether or not the traffic managment and qos i've put in place on the corporate network is working.
It doesn't really matter so much on this particular network as p2p protocols are blocked (infact every outgoing port is blocked from the internal lan, some https sites are whitelisted, and all non-ssl web access is proxied.
But it will allow me to ensure the qos for our voip trunks is effective.
It got Slashdotted:
... 9 more
caused by: java.io.IOException: open HTTP connection failed.
at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.getBytes(AppletClassLoader.java:265)
at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.access$100(AppletClassLoader.java:43)
at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader$1.run(AppletClassLoader.java:152)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.findClass(AppletClassLoader.java:149)
My blog
"ComObjectCast and a group of partners have released a set of tools designed to help broadband providers and researchers determine the algorithms used by Net Neutrality Measuring Tools. The set of tools, at MeasurementLabSucks.net, includes an enduser diagnostic tool, an enduser pathfinding diagnostic tool, and a tool to determine is the enduser is measuring whether the user's broadband provider is slowing BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic. Coming soon to the M-Lab-Sucks applications is a tool to determine whether an enduser is using a tool to determine that a broadband provider is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic, and a tool to determine if an enduser is using a tool to determine whether a provider is degrading certain users or applications. 'Obfuscation is our goal,' said Argle-bargle GlypfpGlopf, Chief obfuscation evangelist at ComObjectCast and a co-developer of ROFL/MAO. 'Our intent is to make more [information] visible for all who are interested in keeping customers from using what they paid for.'"
> The last issue is traffic caps. I don't think there should be a law against it as long
> as the company is upfront about it. Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize
> their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service.
I don't think that caps should be illegal either but metered service would be much better.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Isn't Dundle Linux doing something with this?
"...BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer (P-to-P) (P2P) (PPP) (P^3) traffic"
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
...it's nice to finally have an automated way of testing this, particularly a method that shows aggregate statistics.
I am on comcast in SF and no dice right now, nothing seems to work maybe its overloaded. Everything is timing out.
We now have a metric to measure neutrality? Isn't that like having a metric to measure fairness?
"Well, objectively speaking, this deal is ten times more fair for me than it is for you."
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The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems has been developing a similar tool. Glasnost: Test if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent traffic.
Developing a system to fool the tools would cost money. Traffic shaping seems to be more a problem with Cable ISPs, and for almost free, they can flood TV with the gripping and compelling story of "HOW CABLE IS FASTAR!!® THAN DSL BECAUSE OF THE TRAFFIC SHAPING!!!" (disclaimer: this movie may or may not be a work of fiction)
Way to preach to the choir, google.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think it's great to measure connection speeds and all, but isn't it a little redundant? We already know Internet Providers are limiting and degrading certain types of traffic. The question isn't IF they are, it's how we get them to stop doing it. Incidentally, that might just happen if Obama, a supporter pushes legislation through holding ISPs accountable for non-neutral networks.
I got ftth at home some months ago.
After a month trying to solve the tiny little problem of having a packet loss between 5 and 25%, the ISP simply didn't know what was happening and they politely told me to find another ISP and retry in a year or two, when the technology was more stable.
And don't they know speed kills?
Any ISP that is interfering with traffic is going to exclude the IPs for bandwidth testing sites from its traffic management policies? At least they will in a market where customers care about this kind of thing, and have a choice of ISP.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
But they should improve the way they report the results, I mean, this says I'm blocked, doesn't it?
/var/www/bb/bittorrent-blocking.php on line 30
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING, expecting ')' in
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
And how are they going to differentiate tiny differences in network latency from the huge sluggishness anything running in java experiences?
Add to that the ultimate irony of java - it was intended as something that would run on anything anywhere, yet in order to make it run on whatever you happen to have you usually have to find, download, and install huge sets of libraries and compilers, find you've got the wrong version, download another huge set, and find it still doesnt work becuase of some bogus assumptions made by the original developer about what would be available. And (as already noted) even if you do manage to get it working, it runs like you've got an old 486 with 8M of ram.
java - no thanks.
I Am Happy To Read It "Google and Friends Release Net Neutrality Measuring Tools" And It's Really Help Broadband Customers & Internet connections Performance Also.... http://www.directaircraft.com/ http://www.minijetplanes.com/ http://www.flypowerjet.com/ http://www.airplanejunction.com/
Comcast is blocking the site.
Still down as of now.
Maybe they're just using us to test their ISP? :)
I can't wa!t to try this on my c0mc@st conn3ction either.
For some re@son I ke@p getting an 3rror message when I try to subm!t my eagerness to t3st c0mc@st in pl@in t3xt
Slashdotted or my ISP already filters the the c**p out of my connection.
You've just been scammed! Enjoy the rewards of boosting some clipclown's unique visitor count so he can sell his domain next week. Eh? Wha? Orly? Yeah dude. sascha@ucimc.org owns 10 domains, all registered in the past 3 weeks, one of which is your beloved article header. Did you really think this product would do anything other than capitalize on your fear that your ISP is screwing you? Money made, hand in pocket with massive funds. Site soon to vanish. Oh surprise surprise. Let's call this news. Ya'll just as lazy as the next captcha authentication method.
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