Internet Innovation Initiative

(Github)

The Internet Innovation Initiative at the University of Chicago develops 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.

Read more about the initiative here.

Data

We collect and release Internet performance data from deployed measurement devices:

• Household Internet Performance Data - Quarterly releases from our deployments

Software

Our GitHub organization maintains Netrics, an open-source system for measuring Internet performance from deployed devices.

Try our Docker demo: Quick Start Guide

Measurement Software

Repositories:

• nm-exp-active-netrics - Production version
• Netrics (beta) - Redesigned for easier collaboration
• Netrics Docker - Containerized deployment

Bundles network diagnostic tools with configurable scheduling. Built-in tests include speed tests (Ookla, NDT, iperf), DNS latency, ping latency, and responsiveness. Extensible framework for adding custom measurements.

Dashboard

Repository: netrics-dash

Web interface for visualizing device measurements: bandwidth, latency, connected devices, WiFi performance.

Backend

Data Pipeline: AWS S3 storage with InfluxDB/Grafana visualization.

Fleet Management: Salt Stack for device updates and monitoring.

Backend code available upon request.

People

Led by Professors Nick Feamster and Nicole Marwell at the University of Chicago. Full team here.

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 },
}

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and data.org.

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.

Netrics Data by Internet Innovation Initiative is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.