[Nets-seminars] Seminar at UCL Electronic Engineering Dept

[Richard G. Clegg]

Next week's seminar is at 16:00 on 24th February in GS/302 66/72 Gower 
Street (just south of the main UCL campus).  The speaker is Sam Crawford 
from samknows.com.

"Measuring end-to-end broadband performance with a large deployment of 
hardware probes"

"Measuring the performance delivered by a nation's communications
operators is key to ensuring a fair and accountable market. Studies
have shown this to be demonstrably difficult, with multiple broadband
measurement services offering wildly varying figures [1]. Whilst much
of the difference can be accounted for by differing technical
methodologies, there are other factors too (such as the sample) that
can cause variance.

In mid-2008 SamKnows began an effort to provide an accurate, reliable
and repeatable broadband performance measurements for Ofcom (the UK
telecoms regulator). Uniquely, this project utilised hardware probes
to avoid 'cross-traffic' and other in-home issues that may affect
measurements. Since then this platform has evolved significantly and
has been adopted by regulators worldwide.

This talk focuses on the technical challenges of delivering a large,
distributed hardware measurement platform. Non-technical challenges
(such as logistical and sampling considerations) are discussed too. We
also take a brief look at the key findings of the regulators' studies
in the UK and US.

Areas of interest / key phrases:
- Network programming
- Network measurement
- Hardware hacking
- OpenWrt

1. Bauer et al.
http://mitas.csail.mit.edu/papers/Bauer_Clark_Lehr_Broadband_Speed_Measurements.pdf"

-- 
Richard G. Clegg,
Dept of Elec. Eng.,
University College London
http://www.richardclegg.org/