Technofriends

In my previous post, you learnt about how to use Ping and TraceRoutes to do some basic level of debugging related to your internet connection. Though tools like Speedtest do help you get information about your internet connection, the complete picture about the insights can only come from a combination of tools.

When it comes to performance, one often faces questions like whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP, the application, your PC, or something else? In such sitations It certainly can be difficult for experts, let alone average Internet users, to address this sort of question today. Google in collaboration with the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, and academic researchers is trying to address these questions with a new niche initiative called the Measurement Lab (M-Lab).

Currently, there are three tools which are live on M-Lab website, these tools are listed below for your reference.

1.) Network Diagnostic Tool

Network Diagnostic Tool can help you test your connection speed and receive sophisticated diagnosis of problems limiting speed. Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT) provides a sophisticated speed and diagnostic test. An NDT test reports more than just the upload and download speeds — it also attempts to determine what, if any, problems limited these speeds, differentiating between computer configuration and network infrastructure problems. While the diagnostic messages are most useful for expert users, they can also help novice users by allowing them to provide detailed trouble reports to their network administrator.

Unfortunately, i couldnt get hold of the tool to test initially…seems like too many people queued up for the test. 

However, later after several retries, i did manage to run the tests. ( Click on the image to enlarge).

2.) Glasnost

Glasnost is an interesting tool which helps you Test whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled by your ISP or network provider.

3.) Network Path and Application Diagnosis

This tool can help you diagnose common problems that impact last-mile broadband networks. These are the most common causes of all performance problems on wide area network paths.

When i started with this tool, i had close to 98 test waiting before me, its like i was waitlisted at 99 position. However, after quite a lot of waiting, i did manage to run the tests.

The above three tools are live and functional, M-Lab also has two more tools which should be released very soon. The tools are

1.) DiffProbe: This is certainly one of the very interesting tool which can add more fuel to the overall net neutrality discussion. This tool can help you discover if your ISP is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic.

2.) NANO: NANO can help you determine whether an ISP is degrading the performance of a certain subset of users, applications, or destinations.

Though the tools look very interesting and am sure you would be curious to learn more about them and try them by yourself, it must be noted that M-Lab is still under development and like any under development application has its own limitations. 

Please do remember that like me, you too may experience delays in running the tools, as currently, M-Lab only allows a limited number of simultaneous users at this stage. 

The tools are all created by individual researchers, not M-Lab itself. The M-Lab servers are currently provided by Google Inc., and may in the future be provided by other organizations and companies.

Via

 

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