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.
Landing
We shared our plans for Modernizing the M-Lab Platform and our progress in M-Lab 2.0 Platform Migration Update, demonstrated comparable performance in the new platform in M-Lab 2.0 Platform: Global Pilot Entry and M-Lab 2.0 Platform: Global Pilot Success. The new M-Lab is based on docker, kubernetes, and runs on stock Linux kernels. It leverages kernel APIs and virtualization technologies that did not exist when the first M-Lab was built and provides unprecedented transparency and reproducibility.
Now we’re running both new and backward compatible measurement services, with plans to add more soon:
These primary measurement services run alongside core service and sidecar containers that collect additional instrumentation from tcp-info, packet-headers, traceroute-caller, and switch utilization.
Increasingly, we are focused on accessibility of these new datatypes such as in NDT Dataset, Tables, & Views. Look forward to more updates soon!
Thank you
We could not have done this alone.
From 2009 through 2019, PlanetLab kept the web100- and vserver-based M-Lab platform running. This included building custom kernels to fix bugs and support each new generation of hardware. This included keeping the boot servers running through certificate updates, server failures, and major upgrades. Special thanks to Michael Wawrzoniak for his years of support to M-Lab, and to Larry Peterson for his early vision and long term institutional support.
Thanks to isc.org and greenhost.net for providing M-Lab with primary/secondary DNS resolution for hundreds of millions of clients around the world.
Thanks to New America’s Open Technology Institute for leadership and support over the years.
Thanks to the FCC and SamKnows for conducting the Measuring Broadband America survey using M-Lab’s open measurement platform and promoting standards for open methods.
Thanks to the dozens of Supporting Partners, site hosts, and transit providers that make the Internet observable. Your contributions are timely and enduring.
And, thank you so much to our users for running billions of speed tests every year. Each one helps inform network research and public policy with real data. Thank you for reporting successes, problems, and helping us broaden our use-cases over time.
Thank you!