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.
Say Hello to Murakami
The Measurement Lab team has always tried to make it as easy as possible to run network measurements. Currently, most users run tests either directly from the M-Lab website, or through a 3rd party integration. Over the years, many users have requested the ability to run tests on a regular basis, e.g. daily or weekly to collect data over time. Today, we’re releasing a tool that will help you do just that.
Showing Missing Data in Line Charts
The M-Lab team has been working with Bocoup’s Data Visualization team to overhaul our visualizations and give all of you better support in exploring all of the Measurement Lab data. Look for more about that soon – and reach out via support@measurementlab.net if you are interested in helping with testing and user feedback!
M-Lab has lots of data, but depending on how you slice the data, you might end up with too small of a sample size on a given day in a given location. As part of designing the Observatory visualization, we came up with the idea of using dotted lines to show that we didn’t have a large enough sample size to assert the data value, but that leaving out the data would be incorrect as well. The Bocoup Team took that further and developed a new d3 plugin, d3-line-chunked, which allows you to easily visualize gaps in your data and has good animation support.
New Opportunities for Test Deployment and Continued Analysis of Interconnection Performance
In late April, Internet2, with contributions from M-Lab developers, released an updated version of the Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT), M-Lab’s most widely deployed performance measurement test. In addition to improved stability, the updated version of NDT makes it possible to measure network performance from a web browser without the need for browser plugins. This change removes a layer of complexity and hassle for developers and users. Anyone interested in Internet measurement can now create their own NDT client targeted for specific user populations, regions, and research objectives, using only HTML and Javascript.
M-Lab @ Google Summer of Code 2014!
We are proud to announce that the M-Lab has been accepted as a mentoring organization to the Google Summer of Code a third year in a row.