M-Lab Goals
An Open Platform
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.
M-Lab's Mission
Partners
People Are Using M-Lab
http://measurementlab.net/news/2010/jul/07/m-lab-overview-prezi
Municipalities
States & Territories
National Governments
Research & Academic Institutions
The Curious General Public
Why Are They Using It?
More than 100,000 people a day!
In other words, this is an excellent testing tool and infrastructure.

Analyzing the publically available data from this test [M-Lab's NDT] has been very helpful in advancing our own understanding of the performance bottlenecks on today’s broadband networks.
Understanding Broadband Speed Measurement
Clark, Bauer, and Lehr (June 2010)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://mitas.csail.mit.edu/papers/Bauer_Clark_Lehr_Broadband_Speed_Measurements.pdf
Open Platform
Open Source Tools
Publicly Available Open Data
The M-Lab platform makes available to tool developers a large number of purpose-built and well-connected measurement servers in strategic locations around the globe.
MLab 1 Nodes
mlab1.sea01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.nuq01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.lax01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.dfw01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.ord01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.lga01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.lga02.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.atl01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.mia01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.lhr01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.ams01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.ams02.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.par01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.ath01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.ham01.measurement-lab.org
mlab1.syd01.measurement-lab.org
MLab 2 Nodes
mlab2.sea01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.nuq01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.lax01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.dfw01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.ord01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.lga01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.lga02.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.atl01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.mia01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.lhr01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.ams01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.ams02.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.par01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.ath01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.ham01.measurement-lab.org
mlab2.syd01.measurement-lab.org
MLab 3 Nodes
mlab3.sea01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.nuq01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.lax01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.dfw01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.ord01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.lga01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.lga02.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.atl01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.mia01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.lhr01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.ams01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.ams02.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.par01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.ath01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.ham01.measurement-lab.org
mlab3.syd01.measurement-lab.org
Measurement Lab: Overview and an Invitation to the Research Community
C. Dovrolis, K. Gummadi, A. Kuzmanovic, S. D. Meinrath (June 2010)
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p53-3v40n3m-dovrolisPS.pdf
U.S. 8 National Traffic Exchange Points, 9 sites, 27 Nodes
Seattle
Mountain View
Los Angeles
Chicago
Dallas
Miami
Atlanta
New York
E.U. 4 Locations, 6 sites, 18 Nodes
London
Paris
Amsterdam
Hamburg
Athens
S.E. Asia, S. Pacific 1 Location, 1 Site, 3 Nodes
Sydney
Current Node List
What's at a Site?
Each Site is composed of 3 identical servers (Nodes) for redundancy and load balancing.  Nodes are all "server-class" and well provisioned for conducting high-bandwidth measurements at large scale.
Hardware
 At least three enterprise-class servers
  - 8x CPU Cores
  - 8GB RAM (or 8GB for 64-bit systems)
  - dual 100+GB Disks
  - 1 Gbps Ethernet Network Adapter
  - Built-in remote diagnostic, configuration, & power reset interface (such as Dell DRAC, HP iLO or OpenIPMI, Intel AMT, etc)
IP Addresses
A /26 of IPv4 address space is required to support a site with three servers. IPv6 connectivity is a plus.
Network connectivity
The minimum requirement is 1 Gbps to an upstream provider with no filtering or firewall.
Collect information and data on how the Internet is operating today
Stimulate research activities to collect and analyze data to improve the understanding of the Internet
Assist consumers to better understand their broadband connection with publicly accesible tools and data
Support public debates about policy and regulation by supplying unbiased measurement data
Inside an M-Lab Node
Each node's base is a custom Open Source Linux Operating System maintained by PlanetLab.  This system makes use of the Web100 instruments in the Linux TCP/IP stack to expose over a 150 network related variables for hosted measurement tests.
c2sspd, s2cspd, CurRwinRcvd, MaxRwinRcvd, loss, Ping, MaxRTT, avgrtt, jitter, CurRTO, WaitSec, SACKsRcvd, host, osVer, osName, osArch, javaVer, mismatch, Bad_cable, congestion, cwndtime, AccessTech, pctRcvrLimited, optimalRcvrBuffer, clientIP

A current list of variables:
http://web100.org/download/kernel/2.5.28/tcp-kis.txt

PlanetLab is the primary node maintainer
- Core node operations
- Assists in creating new measurement environments
- M-Lab nodes are not available to all PlanetLab Researchers
Slices are created on each node to allocate specific resources for each tool.
Implemented as Linux-Vservers, which implements both namespace and performance isolation among slices on a single machine
Network virtualization is implemented using VNET
Tests show insignificant virtualization overhead (about 1-2%)

PlanetLab Architecture Overview:
https://www.planet-lab.org/doc/guides/user
We Need You!
M-Lab depends on the contribution of servers and connectivity from academic and industrial partners
Develop a unique tool that can run on the M-Lab platform
Data storage partners
Visualization/Infographic developers

A collaborative effort: we welcome suport from researchers, institutions, and companies that share M-Lab’s goals

http://www.measurementlab.org/getinvolved
Virtualization
Open Source Measurement Tools
NDT
Advanced Network Diagnostic Tool
Report measured upload & download speeds
Determine what problems are limiting speed i.e. client computer, home network, provider network, or testing server
Identify if the network connection is behind a NAT
Detect Firewall and possible end-to-end network settings

All tools are created by individual researchers, not M-Lab itself
All researchers are required to publish client and server software source code to allow for 3rd party review
All researchers' tools must be operated and licensed in such a way as to allow 3rd parties to develop client-side software for measurements

User Results
Researcher Results
NPAD
Advanced Diagnostic tester
Analyze host configuration and network path
Identify if routers/switches would impact WAN performance
Web-based output simplifies problem reporting

http://www.psc.edu/networking/projects/pathdiag/
Glasnost
Determine if an ISP is blocking email, HTTP or SSH transfer, Flash video, and P2P apps including BitTorrent, eMule and Gnutella.

http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php
Pathload2
Measures available bandwidth
Reports “Raw” bps capacity independent of transport or application protocol

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Constantinos.Dovrolis/Papers/NetDov0248.pdf
Sidestream
Collect TCP details (web100 variables) from regular web traffic on a client computer
Collects information as a byproduct of general client network usage
No special test stream required
A way to evaluate, compare, and validate other active test results

http://www.measurementlab.net/news/2010/jan/19/side-stream-experiment

Windrider
Attempts to detect whether your mobile broadband provider is performing application or service specific differentiation, i.e. prioritizing or slowing traffic to certain websites, applications, or content.

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ict992/mobile.htm
ShaperProbe
Detects whether your ISP performs "traffic shaping" in either the upload or download directions.  In the even of shapping, ShaperProbe reports the shaping rate and the "maximum burst size" before shaping begins.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~partha/diffprobe/shaperprobe.html
Test Client Interfaces For Users
In Web Browser
Mobile Devices
Open Data
All data collected through M-Lab is intended to be made publicly available and placed in the public domain either immediately or after an optional 1 year embargo
Collecting over 60TB of Data
Raw measurement data (web100 and TCPdump logs) is created when a user runs a tool hosted on M-Lab
Raw data is stored locally on each M-Lab node
Seperate data collecting servers regularly collect all raw data
M-Lab tools consolidate raw data and re-format for 3rd party services
Formated test records are pushed to Amazon's EC2 and Google BigQuery

http://measurementlab.org/news/2009/dec/10/calling-all-researchers-m-lab-data-now-available-amazon-ec2

http://www.measurementlab.org/news/2010/jun/18/more-good-thing-analyze-and-access-m-lab-data-using-google-bigquery-and-google-stor
Next?
Closest Node
M-Lab tools have access to DONAR.
A distributed system that provides name resolution and server selection for replication services. 
Dynamic mapping policies direct users based on geographic location and platform load distribution.

http://donardns.org
Measurement Lab (M-Lab)
What Makes M-Lab Unique?

http://e2epi.internet2.edu/ndt
An overprovisioned, extensible, scalable, robust open platform for open measurement tools
The M-Lab Platform
Using only 1% of total resources
Operational Tools
Coming Soon!
Where is M-Lab
M-Lab Hosted Tools
Enabling deep critcal data analysis with transparent and open source tools and methodologies