Project Proposed: This project, developing a network measurement approach centered on where users live and on their specific interactions with the Internet, supports a wide range of research projects. The instrumentation provides a means to test applicable techniques from research projects on a large scale through vetted experiments and will be accessible to all users via two integrated measurement approaches that - Execute within the protected sandbox of a user Web browser to provide low impediments encouraging broad user participation while still yielding useful Internet data. - Perform more extensive application-oriented performance tests from a user's machine and is not constrained by the sandbox. The former makes use of entertainment applications in the form of games and videos to help engage users and increase participation. The application-oriented nature of the latter tests yields performance data that can be uploaded for sharing among network researchers while providing feedback to users on network applications of interest. This feedback serves as an incentive for user participation. Thus, the platform provides information about the network applications that interest home users and conditions in which these applications operate. Researchers can use the platform tests from their own measurement points (MPs) and then calibrate the characteristics of their MPs with others. The entertainment orientation of the sandboxed platform serves provides an environment to decide how best to employ the use of videos and games for measurement. The open research area offers a training opportunity for students. Broader Impacts: This project promotes teaching and training through integration with systems courses and the Interactive Media and Games Development (IMGD) program. The work also aims to broaden participation in science and engineering by underrepresented groups through IMGD. Moreover, the available data sets are likely to provide a foundation for scientific discovery.
The project investigates a network measurement approach centered on user-specific interactions with the Internet. A primary goal is to provide measurement instrumentation accessible to all users via the protected sandbox of a user Web browser, which provides low impediments to encourage user participation while still yielding useful Internet performance data to users and scientists. The platform takes measurements relevant to specific online activities such as browsing Web news sites, watching streaming videos, playing online games, or participating in video conferences. The application-oriented nature of these tests is an incentive for users in providing valuable feedback while still yielding performance data that can be uploaded for sharing among network researchers. A secondary goal of the work is to apply the principles of reducing impediments and providing incentives to users of mobile platforms (e.g., smart phones). In this case, the incentive for users is to focus on the resource (CPU, network, power) usage of applications installed by a user. Not only does the platform measure this resource usage, but it also provides predictions for future usage of these applications. The project has resulted in three significant outcomes. First, a project outcome includes the deployment of a system that measures the network performance (upload/download throughput, round-trip time and jitter) between a client browser and a server. These measurements are performed between the browser and the project server as well as between the browser and any third-party server on the Web. The measurements can be done via either the JavaScript or Flash sandbox platforms within the browser and returned to the project server for storage in a database. The overhead of these sandbox platforms for both the JavaScript and Flash were validated using two different approaches for making tests from each of these platforms. The stored data is available for subsequent analysis by both the principal investigators and other scientists, after suitable data anonymization. Second, a project outcome identifies and builds performance measurements for specific online activities (e.g., browsing Web news sites, watching videos, playing games, accessing email) performed by users and how the performance of these activities can be predicted based upon underlying network performance measures that the platform can obtain. Users can see their session-level results across multiple applications. Network researchers can analyze results across all users to be displayed for different network and work settings. Third, a project outcome applies the principles of the project---maximize performance measurement incentives while minimizing impediments---to mobile platforms. This includes development of applications for both the Android and IOS mobile platforms. These applications not only perform measurements and display information to users on resource usage for the user's installed mobile applications, but have the capability to upload measurements to the project server where they are stored and can be analyzed along with data collected from other devices. The results of this analysis can then be downloaded by the mobile application to provide the user more comprehensive information on the expected cost (e.g., network and power usage) of each application relative the perceived benefit of this application. The primary intellectual merits of this project are an invaluable, large-scale understanding of network performance from the application-oriented vantage point of most Internet users. This user-centered perspective is original and contributes to the body of research on network design and experimentation. Furthermore, the project demonstrates that the same design principles, high incentives and low impediments, can be extended to mobile platforms to encourage user participation and increase the amount of data gathered. The project also has had many broader impacts. It has been used in the teaching of Computer Science courses as well as involved in projects for students in the Interactive Media and Game Development program at WPI. It has been used as part of high school outreach programs on campus. This work has contributed to the development and skills of the supported graduate students, providing expertise in the deployment and testing a browser-based measurement platform, designing and developing mobile applications, and designing experiments to obtain and analyze the performance results. The project has helped non-technical users understand performance in terms of the applications they care about, for both traditional Web and mobile users.
