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Google unveils tools to test your bandwidth

January 30, 2009 — 4:08am ET | By Paul Mah

Google has unveiled tools to measure if your ISP is giving you the bandwidth that you paid for. Under an initiative called Measurement Lab (M-Lab), Google is launching an open system where consumers can tap into its Internet performance measurement tools. All collected data via M-Lab will be made publicly available to other researchers.

In a blog post on the official Google blog, Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist and Stephen Stuart, Principal Engineer acknowledged the existence of tools for measuring broadband speeds and diagnosing of common problems. However, they noted that researchers lacked widely-distributed servers with "ample connectivity," which understandably affects the accuracy and scalability of these tools. As such, Google will be providing researchers with some 36 servers spread over 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe over the course of early 2009.

Besides testing for speed, another of Google's tools on the M-Lab site will also allow users to determine whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled, as well as diagnostics of common problems which could impact last-mile broadband networks. Two other tools; DiffProbe and NANO, determines if some traffic is being assigned lower priorities, and whether performance of certain users and applications are specifically targeted for degradation, respectively.

These tools are still in development, and as such will only support a limited number of simultaneous users at this point. As it is, I attempted to load the test for about 15 minutes, but failed to get it to work correctly. Perhaps you will have better luck with the tools.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this blog post at Official Google Blog

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Comments

By Brett Glass | Posted 2:19pm | January 30, 2009

Alas, these so-called "measurement tools" are not scientific measurement tools; they're propaganda tools. They're not designed to give accurate readings but to find fault with your connection, even if there is nothing wrong with it, so that you are more likely to support regulation of ISPs (which Google is lobbying for).

We put the "NDT" program on a 3 Mbps, wide open connection and it reported a speed of only 92 Kbps. It then locked up altogether. Clearly, this software was not written by anyone with experience in the provision of broadband.

As mentioned above, it appears that the true purpose of these tools is to make ISPs look bad so as to promote regulation of ISPs and the Internet. Which, of course, is what Googleclick (remember, they now have merged with DoubleClick -- the largest supplier of spyware tracking cookies in the world) has been lobbying for. It wants the Internet to be regulated -- its way.

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