Google to ISPs: Who's your daddy?

Internet service provider efforts to find a way to deal with network management and congestion issues may just have hit a high-profile bump in the road – courtesy of Google.

The search giant, which seems to have enjoyed tweaking telecom operators in a number of areas – including pushing for net neutrality legislation, bidding on spectrum to trigger open access requirements and lobbying for white-spaces data services – has now launched a site that gives end users tools to determine how ISPs are managing their traffic.

The site, Measurement Labs , was built with partners New America Foundation and Planet Labs. It features a variety of open-source tools that customers can use to find out information about their broadband connections – including measuring their speed of connection, running diagnostics and discerning if an ISP is throttling particular applications, according to Google. The site is also positioned as a “platform” that researchers can use to launch new measurement servers. To support the effort, Google is providing the site with 36 servers in 12 locations in the US and Europe.

“No matter your views on net neutrality and ISP network management practices, everyone can agree that Internet users deserve to be well-informed about what they're getting when they sign up for broadband, and good data is the bedrock of sound policy,” Google wrote in a note on its corporate blog, in a post co-signed by Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist, and Stephen Stuart, principal engineer.

While such tools have been available in a variety of locations, Google said its aim is to bring them together all in one place to gather a critical mass of users, who in turn can generate a critical mass of data that researchers can use to evaluate ISP connections worldwide.

There are three tools available on the site initially. A Network Diagnostic Tool tests the end user's speed and diagnoses if network problems might be causing problems. It also collects user IP addresses, connection speed, packet headers and TCP variable, all information that could be valuable for historical data analysis. A second tool, called Glasnost, tests to see if BitTorrent connections in particular are being slowed. A third tool, Network Path and Application Diagnosis (NPAD), focuses on last-mile, in-home-network and user-system problems. Additional tools are slated to arrive soon, including DiffProbe, which will specifically address QoS-style issues, including whether an ISP has deprioritized a particular bit of traffic as low priority. Another tool, Nano will focus on determining if sets of users, applications or destinations have been deprioritized.

The move comes as service providers are experimenting with ways to relieve congestion in their networks, mostly caused by small numbers of users using P2P or other high-consumption protocols. Comcast is now on its second congestion scheme, while just yesterday Cox formally launched its own efforts. Most ISPs are believed to be using some form of network management – often relying on deep packet inspection tools to evaluate traffic levels – though most have been operating under the radar of public scrutiny – at least for now.