Requiring access tokens for ndt7

Starting October 7th, 2020, the ndt7 server on the M-Lab platform will require access tokens issued by the Locate API v2 to run a measurement.

Migration

With the ndt7 migration, clients began using access tokens. However, the NDT server does not yet require access tokens. On October 7th, we will require ndt7 clients to provide access tokens when running a measurement.

The Locate API v2 issues signed JSON web tokens (access tokens) that the target service verifies.

All officially supported clients use the Locate API v2 and provide access tokens to the ndt7 server automatically.

• ndt7-client-go
• ndt7-js

Third-party clients should migrate to the Locate API v2 to use access tokens too.

Get Access Tokens

To get an access token for ndt7, query the Locate API. Each result includes a set of URL templates as key and a complete URL as the value which includes the access token.

curl https://locate.measurementlab.net/v2/nearest/ndt/ndt7
{
  "results": [
    {
      "machine": "mlab2-lga05.measurement-lab.org",
      "location": {
        "city": "New York",
        "country": "US"
      },
      "urls": {
        "wss:///ndt/v7/download": "wss://ndt-mlab2-lga05.measurement-lab.org/ndt/v7/download?access_token=.",
        "wss:///ndt/v7/upload": "wss://ndt-mlab2-lga05.measurement-lab.org/ndt/v7/upload?access_token=.",
      }
    },
    {
      ...
    }
  ]
}

Use Access Tokens

Clients do not have to interpret access tokens. Clients are only responsible for delivering the access token to the target service. For ndt7, the HTTP request parameters include the access token value, and are delivered automatically by typical HTTP or websocket libraries when making a connection.

Questions

If you have questions, please let us know.

Update

As of 2021-02-02, access tokens are now required on M-Lab servers for ndt7 measurements.