Google Grant Funds Tools for Internet Transparency

The Internet services company Google has awarded a grant to Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to help Web users determine the cause of degraded Internet services. The $1 million Google Focused Research Award will fund a two-year project at Georgia Tech, with an option for a third year.

The project aims to make Internet access more transparent for the network subscribers worldwide. The team hopes to provide a suite of free, Web-based measurement tools to help users determine if their Internet service providers (ISPs) are providing the kind of service promised, and whether the data exchanged over their network connections are being compromised by governments and/or ISPs.

The project will analyze Internet access along three main properties:

– Reachability from a variety of access networks
– Performance of user networks, particularly in comparison to the performance promises made by ISPs
– Integrity of information moving through these networks.

The total number of worldwide users — currently estimated at 1.9 billion — is expected to double within the next decade. Also, at least 4.5 billion people subscribe to cellular networks, accessing through their mobile devices everything from online banking services to streaming music and video. Both traditional Internet connections and cellular-based networks are expected to be covered by the tools created.

“We hope this project will help create a ‘transparency ecosystem,’ where more and more users will take advantage of the measurement tools,” says Wenke Lee, computer science professor and a principal investigator on the grant, “which in turn will improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our analysis.”

Photo: kosheahan/Flickr

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