Public Report for First Open Measurement Gathering (OMG)
As shared in our last blog post, In June 2024 Measurement Lab (M-Lab) co-organized and participated in the first of four convenings that will take place over the course of the Open Measurement Gatherings (OMG) project. The public report from that event can be found here.
We look forward to our next event in December and to continuing to strengthen the open Internet measurement community!
M-Lab Organizes and Participates in the First Open Measurement Gathering (OMG)
From June 11th-13th, 2024, Measurement Lab (M-Lab) organized and participated in the first of four convenings that will take place over the course of the Open Measurement Gatherings (OMG) project. The inaugural event was planned in collaboration with the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech’s Internet Intelligence Lab, where the event was also hosted.
Testing Fast MDA Traceroute
Join our monthly community call on June 6, 2024 at 11am ET to discuss Dioptra’s recent work on fast-mda-traceroute and considerations that have gone into its design and testing.
Measuring the Quality of an Individual's Connection
Interested in metrics that measure an Internet connection’s quality from the end user perspective? Join us at our April M-Lab Community Call on April 4, 2042 at 11am EDT.
How should Internet quality be measured? Join us for our Community Call on February 1, 2024
Access to high speed Internet does not necessarily mean access to high quality Internet. But if not speed then what? How should we measure Internet quality? Join our monthly community call on February 1, 2024 at 11am ET to discuss and contribute to our latest research initiative, sponsored by Internet Society Foundation.
July 2023 Office Hours
Join us for M-Lab’s next Community Office Hours on July 20, 2023 at 11:00am EDT!
Introducing M-Lab Community Office Hours
Are you new to M-Lab data? Do you have questions about how to use it or how it can fit into your research?
M-Lab Fellowship Presentation Videos and Reports
Recordings of the 2022 M-Lab Fellowship Presentations and Reports.
M-Lab Fellowship Presentations
Come learn about the exciting research that the M-Lab Fellows completed during their fellowship!
Request for Comments - User Privacy & Research Usability
On March 16 we hosted a town hall discussion regarding M-Lab’s collection of IP addresses and asked for feedback on potential alternatives. We are accepting comments on the techniques we proposed until April 1.
User Privacy & Research Usability Town Hall - March 16, 2022 at 11:00a Eastern
Presentation on the benefits and challenges of M-Lab’s collection of IP addresses and feedback solicitation for potential alternatives
Upcoming M-Lab Community Call discussing Measurement, Meaning and Purpose
At TPRC 2021, Dave Clark and Sare Wedeman presented “Measurement, Meaning and Purpose: Exploring the NDT Dataset” which raises relevant and timely questions about M-Lab’s NDT dataset and its potential applications. Please join us Wednesday, December 15, 2021 from 11am-12:00 pm Eastern for a presentation from the authors and a discussion with the M-Lab community.
Upcoming M-Lab Community Call discussing Latency, Bufferbloat, Responsiveness
Internet performance is often measured by download and upload “speed” but there are other metrics that can help measure connectivity, such as latency, bufferbloat and a more recently discussed metric: responsiveness. Join us next Wednesday, August 25, 2021 from 11am-12:30pm Eastern for a conversation with Internet Measurement researchers with expertise and interest in each of these metrics including:
M-Lab Discuss list Newsletter - March 2021
Hello!
I hope this finds you well. Today I’m writing with the first of many newsletters that you’ll receive on this mailing list. In each monthly edition, we’ll provide updates about M-Lab such as changes to our platform and pipeline, data schemas, community tools, best practice analyses, community case studies, documentation and guides, and more. Ultimately, our goal is to communicate with you on a more regular basis, so we encourage you to reply with any questions or comments that come to mind. Additionally, as part of our efforts to communicate more effectively, we’ve established a lightweight set of community guidelines that we ask participants to keep in mind as you engage here and on any other M-Lab hosted forum. If there is anything you’d like to see in these newsletters, please do let me know. And without further ado!
2021 Community Call Schedule
In 2021, Measurement Lab will facilitate a series of community calls focusing on 3 core topics: General M-Lab updates, Internet Measurement Research and Broadband Advocacy/Policy. We will rotate through these topics on the fourth Wednesday of every month and every meeting will take place at 11am EST for 60-90 mins.
Accessible M-Lab NDT data for Internet Performance research during COVID-19
In response to increased reliance on the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic Measurement Lab, with the support of Internet Society, is dedicated to making our NDT data more accessible so everyone with an interest in Internet Performance can use our data in their research. We started with a visualization of test count and median download speeds in New York, India, and Sao Paulo as an example of what data was available to researchers through BigQuery.
Recent updates regarding the SamKnows experiment
Measurement Lab (M-Lab) has been a supportive partner of the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America program since its beginning due to the program’s commitment to openness, open data and transparency which aligns closely with M-Lab’s mission around open data and open source internet measurement. Measurement Lab began hosting the SamKnows server-side measurement tools in 2009.
As of February 14, 2020, Measurement Lab is unable to host the SamKnows experiment due to SamKnows’ decision to not comply with M-Lab’s long-standing open source requirements. To ensure and encourage transparency for the MBA program, we are publishing this post to document the timeline leading up to that decision.
How Measurement Lab’s Open Data can be used during COVID-19
Measurement Lab’s dataset is free, open, and full of data for Internet researchers to study how the Internet is performing under the increased COVID-19 related Internet usage. The DataStudio dashboards below correspond to the internal monitoring metrics we posted last week. They show data about test rate and median download speeds as COVID-19 increased its impact globally.
Changes Related to COVID-19
As COVID-19’s impact increases globally, more people are working, learning and living online. Internet infrastructure is critical in these moments. The user-initiated measurements collected by M-Lab provide an opportunity to understand whether our shared infrastructure can handle the unprecedented shift of load to the network’s edges. The following is a snapshot analysis of how our platform’s traffic has shifted in the last three weeks. We will follow up with DataStudio dashboards using our public data set soon.
As these dashboards will show, the benefit of open data is that anyone can access it, use it, and reproduce research done with it. If you are using or would like to use M-Lab data in your response to the Internet’s performance during COVID-19, please let us know!
Digital Inclusion @ Home Announcement
As COVID-19’s impact increases globally, more people are working, learning and living online. In partnership with NDIA, X-Lab, ILSR and Marconi Society, Measurement Lab has set up a speed test portal to collect geolocated data with an accompanying survey focused on Digital Inclusion @ Home.
New Traceroute Binary on M-Lab platform
M-Lab has always committed to provide traceroute data for the tests running on M-Lab platform. Since we launched new platform in 2019 Q4, the new traceroute binary, Scamper, replaced Paris Traceroute on all our servers. Our BigQuery table for traceroute now has unified schema to cover both the legacy Paris Traceroute test data and new Scamper data. This blog is to analyze the difference between the legacy data and new data.
The 2.0 Platform Has Landed -- Thank you!
After years of planning and steady development, the new M-Lab 2.0 platform has landed. We want to express special thanks to those who have supported the project and helped us get here.
Supporting Internet Self Determination at the 2019 Indigenous Connectivity Summit
Last week M-Lab was honored to attend and contribute at the 2019 Indigenous Connectivity Summit (ICS), presented by Internet Society, in Hilo, Hawai’i; and a community network training and building event in the soverign lands of indigenous Hawaiian people, Pu’uhonua o Waimanalo, on the island of Oahu.
Inspiring Work of Broadband Advocates and Researchers at the Michigan Broadband Summit
The first annual Michigan Broadband Summit was held on Sept. 24, 2019, sponsored by the MERIT research and education network, and it was my pleasure to attend on behalf of M-Lab. 
The gathering was an opportunity to learn more about the amazing work that MERIT, industry, municipalities, cooperatives, school districts and others are doing to improve internet access and service quality in Michigan. I came away inspired by every conversation and presentation, with the keynote from Francella Ochillo from Next Century Cities, and the MERIT team’s presentation of the Moonshot framework being particularly moving.
New Traceroute Table and Schema Now Available
To make our traceroute data in BigQuery more useful, researchers have sought an easy way to reconstruct the path of hops for the same test. This task was particularly hard because the schema, which was designed many years ago, put the hops of the same test in different rows.
To address this need from many of our partners and researchers, M-Lab is delighted to announce that the traceroute BigQuery table in the aggregate dataset is now available to the public. The new traceroute schema has one test per row, and all hops for a single test are inside the same row.
M-Lab Participates in Internet Measurements Workshop at 2019 African Internet Summit
M-Lab was pleased to be invited to contribute to the Internet Measurements workshop at the 2019 African Internet Summit, June 15-16, 2019 in Kampala, Uganda. M-Lab tech lead, Peter Boothe, and advisor, Georgia Bullen, presented a hands-on tutorial on querying and visualizing performance and routing datasets.
Traceroute BigQuery Table New Data Temporarily Halted for Schema Change
M-Lab is working on replacing the current traceroute BigQuery table with new schema, which will put all hops of one test in one row of BigQuery table. The new table will have all the information in the current table but make the search of hops within one test much easier. To make this happen, we will stop the new data feed of current traceroute BigQuery table in early July, 2019. The details of new schema will be published once the conversion of all data to BigQuery tables with the new traceroute schema is completed and available to the public.
Michigan Moonshot Data Collection Pilot Project Launches
M-Lab is excited to highlight the launch of “Michigan Moonshot”, a pilot data collection project developed through a partnership with the MERIT Network, Michigan State University’s Quello Center, and M-Lab. We worked with MERIT developers who adapted the Piecewise codebase to build the Michigan Moonshot website.
Local Communities are Driving Broadband Speed Mapping in the US
Over the past few years, M-Lab has supported an increasing number of local communities, municipalities, regional coalitions, and others who are interested in understanding the state of broadband service in their area. In every case, communities come to M-Lab because of the openness of our data. Combined with M-Lab’s open source code and community examples, we’ve been able to further support communities in building and running their own broadband measurement test sites and broadband community surveys, to support local outreach, advocacy, and planning.
Come work with M-Lab!
Hello M-Lab Community!
TLDR; Interested in working with M-Lab? We are hiring a Project Director and have opportunities for contracts! Check out the job description and more information about the contract, and apply by March 31st!
AFRICOMM 2018 and AFRINIC-29
AFRICOMM 2018. Left to right: Amreesh Phokeer (AFRINIC), Josiah Chavula (University of Capetown), Georgia Bullen (M-Lab), Antoine Delvaux (perfSonar), Stephen Soltesz (M-Lab).
In late November 2018, M-Lab was invited to the Internet Measurement Workshop at AFRINIC-29 in Tunisia and to give a keynote about M-Lab and open internet measurement at AFRICOMM 2018 in Senegal. Both trips were a fantastic opportunity to deepen our relationship with researchers focused on the African Internet, learn more about how our platform is serving community needs, foster conversation around open Internet measurement, and identify opportunities for further collaboration, research and tool development to better support the Internet measurement, research and policy community in Africa.
After A Decade of Growth, Measurement Lab Spins Out of New America to Join Code for Science & Society
Code for Science & Society (CS&S) and New America’s Open Technology Institute are excited to announce that Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is joining CS&S’s Sponsored Projects Program on March 1 after a decade of growth at New America. Measurement Lab has been working in the public interest to measure Internet performance around the world and share data openly since it was launched at New America in 2008, work that will continue and expand at its new institutional home. Read on for more about M-Lab’s history and future plans.
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?
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.