New Tools Available on M-Lab: WindRider for Mobile Users, Glasnost now Tests E-mail and Flash
Among M-Lab's main goals is to enhance transparency and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. When an Internet application doesn't work as expected, how can you tell whether the problem is caused by your broadband connection, the application or something else? Users now have two new tools that can help with that effort.
WindRider attempts to detect whether your mobile broadband provider is performing application or service specific differentiation to certain websites, applications, or content. Installed on on a mobile device such as a SmartPhone or Pocket PC, WindRider initiates a series of downstream and upstream transfers with the Measurement Lab Server and records statistics regarding the observed performance. Over time the application can also measure the delays experienced by different web pages and records the explicit user feedback about different applications.
Learn more.
Install the test here.
Researchers have also substantially updated the Glasnost test that enables ordinary Internet users to detect whether their service provider is performing application-specific traffic shaping or differentiation. Users download a small-size Java applet off the Glasnost webpage. The applet exchanges traffic to M-Lab servers, which the tool then analyzes to detect differentiation
Previously, the tool only looked at the differentiation of P2P traffic, but now tests for traffic differentiation on a number of popular applications including: Email, HTTP transfer and Flash video.
