The Internet Innovation Initiative is an interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Chicago focused on producing datasets, toolkits, and actionable research and insights to support communities working on broadband access across the United States.

Our team brings together researchers with expertise spanning urban governance, social science, computer science, and computer networking, alongside staff with technology and policy backgrounds.

Our Work

We develop tools and techniques for measuring Internet performance and connectivity. Our work focuses on device-based measurement using open-source software that runs on commodity hardware like Raspberry Pi devices.

Internet Study: We actively recruit residents to participate in research measuring home internet connection performance, aiming to understand broadband access and performance variations across different communities.

Community Collaboration: Partnership is a cornerstone of our work. We collaborate with organizations including data.org, Ookla, the City of Chicago, Illinois Office of Broadband, and various community groups.

Current Research

Our current research focuses on several key areas:

  • Internet Performance Measurement: Developing scalable systems for measuring broadband connectivity
    • Netrics: Open-source Internet performance measurement system
  • Data Collection and Analysis: Gathering and releasing Internet performance data
  • Visualization and Dashboards: Making network data accessible and actionable

Resources

We offer maps, data stories, research publications, working papers, community resources, and technical datasets. Visit our Data & Code page to access our resources, or read our News for data stories and insights.

People

Led by Professors Nick Feamster and Nicole Marwell at the University of Chicago. See the full team.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge support from data.org, the National Science Foundation Internet Measurement Research (IMR) program, the NSF Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) program, and the Comcast Innovation Fund.

Contact

Location: John Crerar Library Building, 5730 South Ellis Avenue, Suite 263, Chicago, IL 60637

Email: broadband-research@lists.uchicago.edu

Citation

If you use this code or data, please cite:

@inproceedings{feamster2022benchmarks,
   url = { https://tprcweb.com/ },
   pages = { 1--10 },
   address = { Washington, DC },
   month = { sep },
   year = { 2022 },
   booktitle = { Conference on Communications, Information, and Internet Policy (TPRC) },
   title = { Benchmarks or Equity? A New Approach to Measuring Internet Performance },
   author = { Nick Feamster and Nicole Marwell },
}

License

Code is released under Apache 2.0 License. Data is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.