Recently Measurement Lab was ‘unveiled’ by its sponsors, among which Google, New America Foundation‘s Open Technology Institute and the PlanetLab Consortium. As they state themselves on their website: Measurement Lab (M-Lab) is an open, distributed server platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools. The goal of M-Lab is to advance network research and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. By enhancing Internet transparency, M-Lab helps sustain a healthy, innovative Internet. The good part is that they launched some interesting tools for Users, among which a tool named ‘Glasnost’, which tests whether your internet service provider blocks or hinders BitTorrent. Other tools deal with testing your connection speed or with determining whether your ISP is giving priority to some traffic or users above others (coming soon). The not so good part is that they do collect information about you, your IP-address and your ISP. Maybe not so bad, since they are quite open about it, but think whether you want this before using their tools. And a word of warning: they clearly are in the development phase since their tools are not that easy to use. But fun if you enjoy this kind of stuff.
