NSF Award
2319604
The project addresses the challenge of measuring the performance of Internet access networks over time, and across different geographic regions. This task has been a longstanding challenge for researchers, Internet service providers, and policy advocates. Over the past decade, researchers have made significant progress in developing techniques to measure the performance of individual broadband Internet access links using "speed test" tools. Unfortunately, the existing datasets derived from these tools have limitations that make it difficult to reliably assess Internet performance over time and across geographies.<br/><br/>Towards addressing these challenges, this project is developing new sampling approaches and statistical models that will provide a more comprehensive and representative view of Internet performance across time and space. Part of this effort involves the creation of new Internet measurement datasets, which can ultimately be applied to a range of open questions in both networking research and Internet policy. The datasets the project will create will ultimately shed light on how investments in Internet infrastructure impact performance in specific regions and how performance evolves over time. Given federal investments in broadband infrastructure and the growing public interest in bridging the digital divide, the project's approach is particularly timely and relevant.<br/><br/>From the standpoint of intellectual merit and scholarship, the project brings together experts from multiple disciplines, including network measurement, statistics, visualization, sociology, and public policy. The first challenge is to understand how performance metrics from a single vantage point can be used to generalize about the performance of an entire access network over time. The second challenge involves using spatially correlated Internet measurements from vantage points in broadband Internet access networks to draw conclusions about Internet performance within and across geographic regions.<br/><br/>The broader impact of the project lies in outreach to community, curricular development, and policy impact. One of the motivations behind the research is to investigate whether Internet performance is equitably distributed across<br/>different geographies and neighborhoods within a city. Achieving a comprehensive understanding of this question is critical for addressing questions of equity in Internet access. By developing new analysis frameworks as part of this project, networking researchers and the general public will ultimately gain insight into the distribution of Internet performance and contribute to efforts aimed at reducing the digital divide.<br/><br/>The project website at https://internetequity.org/ will serve as a central hub for sharing project-related resources. The website will publish data, code, results, emulators, simulators, and other materials necessary for reproducibility and collaboration. The project team is committed to maintaining the website to ensure continued access to the project's outputs and facilitate ongoing research and advancements in the field.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
