Google apps sniff out ISP throttling

Google’s Measurement Lab, unveiled last week, contains a few tools for anyone who’s curious about how their Internet service provider handles traffic.

Or perhaps "suspicious" is the right term, as the platform makes it easy to detect whether certain services or users are being throttled.

Among these tools is the appropriately-named "Glasnost," currently set up to detect BitTorrent blocking. The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, which created the program, found in its own research last year that Comcast was blocking BitTorrent in pretty much the same manner throughout the week. This was despite Comcast’s insistence that it’s only doing so during "periods of heavy network traffic." The institute found similar results for Cox.

On the bright side for those that favor Net Neutrality, the latest research shows that BitTorrent blocking has dropped considerably in the last nine months for Comcast, Cox and StarHub customers. Some test periods even turned up no examples of throttling.

The other currently available M-Lab tools aren’t as sneaky. "Network Diagnostic Tool" tests connection speeds and diagnoses problems that might limit speed, and "Network Path and Application Diagnoses" tries to detect common connection problems.

But there are more throttle-detecting tools on the way. "Diffprobe" will determine if an ISP is favoring different kinds of traffic, and "NANO" will figure out if an ISP is hurting the performance of certain users, applications or destinations. The Planck Institute also plans to add more peer-to-peer types to "Glasnost."

As the institute says, "it is hard for users without networking expertise to gain evidence about the behavior of their ISP." These tools will make it easier to hold service providers accountable.