Google launches Measurement Lab

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ISPs beware! Although currently US-centric, the launch of Google's Measurement Lab and tools means that now endusers can discover just what is happening with their broadband and bandwidth.

Several years ago, we debated coding up a SETI@home type app which ran on end user's computers and delivered hard data about their broadband connections which could be used to measure, isolate and provide evidence of problems on the network, with a particular ISP, etc. Google seem to have started the process to provide precisely this type of service.

The Measurement Lab is very new, but already you can see how having such a global name involved in checking for throttling issues, collating information about when specific user groups are being targeted for limited use of both bandwidth and services, and much more that it seems designed to measure, could begin to pinpoint access network problems as well as core.