News for and about the Internet2 community

[Lauren Rotman <>]

New Measurement Lab Provides Open Facilities For Network Researchers  
to Deploy Internet Measurement Tools

Internet2 Community's Network Diagnostic Tool Key Part of M-Lab Launch

Washington D.C. - January 29, 2009 - On Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at  
a special conference held in Washington D.C., Google, the New America  
Foundation's Open Technology Institute, and the PlanetLab Consortium,  
together with researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology,  
Internet2, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, Northwestern  
University and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center launched  
Measurement Lab (M-Lab).

M-Lab is an open platform that provides network researchers with  
international facilities to deploy and test network measurement tools  
on the commercial Internet. The project hopes to support researchers  
in their efforts to analyze Internet usage trends and provide  
consumers with greater transparency in the services they are receiving  
from their Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

As part of its initial development phase, M-Lab will make available  
three network measurement tools that provide users the ability to test  
their network connection speed and diagnose network performance  
problems - including whether specific applications like BitTorrent are  
being blocked or adversely impacted by throttled bandwidth. These  
tools include:  Network Path and Applications Diagnosis (NPAD),  
developed by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center; Glasnost, developed  
by the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems; and the Network  
Diagnostic Tool (NDT), developed by Argonne National Laboratory and  
Internet2.

NDT, now under active development by the Internet2 community, is an  
open-source network performance testing system designed to identify  
computer configuration and network infrastructure problems that  
degrade a user's broadband experience. NDT provides network  
performance information directly to an end user by running a short  
diagnostic test between a Web browser on the user's computer and one  
of several NDT servers deployed around the country. Google is  
supporting the deployment of 36 new NDT servers throughout the U.S.  
and Europe as part of the M-Lab project.

"M-Lab welcomes the participation of Internet2 members to use the  
platform and help us make it flourish," said Rich Carlson Internet2  
network engineer, a developer of NDT, and founding member of M-Lab.  
"This week's announcement is only the beginning. By further engaging  
the research and education community, M-Lab hopes to enable many more  
researchers to test new network measurement tools and analyze data  
critical to understanding Internet performance that will be key to its  
continued growth."

NDT and NPAD servers will be registered in the global Information  
Service used by the perfSONAR performance monitoring system, which  
allows researchers around the world to easily discover a server  
appropriate to their physical location. The data these servers collect  
will also be discoverable, allowing researchers to easily generate new  
insights into how the global Internet is operating. M-Lab complements  
the work of the Internet2 Observatory, which provides facilities on  
the nationwide Internet2 Network for researchers to test and analyze  
data of high performance research networks.

For more information, visit: http://measurementlab.net/

Media Contact:
Lauren Rotman

(202) 872-9119