Internet Audit: A Theory, Toolset, and Applications for a World without Net Neutrality

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation.

Motivation and Approach

A fundamental question in the net neutrality debate is the extent to which network operators should be allowed to discriminate among Internet packet streams. Unfortunately, the state of affairs in reality has dramatically surpassed academic debating at various levels. Rough competition among Internet service and content providers, as well as huge monopoly potentials, are radically increasing the scale of discriminatory acts in the Internet.

The primary goal of this project is not to take sides in the emerging net neutrality debate, but rather to design a system capable of making the Internet more transparent. Our system runs on the Measurement Lab, an open platform founded by Google Inc., the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, and the Planet Lab Consortium.

Details about our mobile application are available here.

People

  • Faculty:
    • Aleksandar Kuzmanovic

  • Collaborators:
    • Bruce Davie, Cisco
    Supranamaya Ranjan, Narus
    Antonio Nucci, Narus
    Gabriel Macia, University of Granada

  • Ph.D. Students:
    • Yong Wang
    Gergely Biczok

  • Undergraduate Students:
    • Daniel Burgener
    Whitney Young

Publications

  • Taming the Mobile Data Deluge with Drop Zones
    I. Trestian, S. Ranjan, A. Kuzmanovic, and A. Nucci
    In IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking , to appear.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz ]
    An extended version of the INFOCOM 2011 paper.

  • Understanding the Network and User-Targeting Properties of Web Advertising Networks
    Y. Wang, D. Burgener, A. Kuzmanovic, and G. Macia
    In Proceedings of IEEE ICDCS 2011, Minneapolis, MN, June 2011.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz | .ppt ]
    The paper analyzes the networking properties of Web advertising networks.

  • Extracting User Web Browsing Patterns from Non-Content Network Traces: The Online Advertising Case Study
    G. Macia, Y. Wang, R. Rodriguez, and A. Kuzmanovic
    In Journal of Computer Networks, to appear, 2011.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz ]
    An extended version of the INFOCOM 2010 paper.

  • Taming User-Generated Content in Mobile Networks via Drop Zones
    I. Trestian, S. Ranjan, A. Kuzmanovic, and A. Nucci
    In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2011, Shanghai, China, April 2011.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz | .ppt ]

  • Measurement Lab: Overview and an Invitation to the Research Community
    C. Dovrolis, K. Gummadi, A. Kuzmanovic, and S. Meinrath
    In ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (editorial note), July 2010.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz ]
    The paper presents an overview of the Measurement Lab.

  • ISP-Enabled Behavioral Ad Targeting without Deep Packet Inspection
    G. Macia, Y. Wang, R. Rodriguez, and A. Kuzmanovic
    In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2010, San Diego, CA, March 2010.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz | .ppt ]

  • Monitoring Network Bias
    G. Biczok, W. Young, and A. Kuzmanovic
    Poster paper in Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2008, Seattle, WA, August 2008.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz | .ppt ]

  • Monitoring Persistently Congested Internet Links
    L. Deng and A. Kuzmanovic
    In Proceedings of IEEE ICNP 2008, Orlando, FL, October 2008.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz | .ppt | .ppt.gz]

  • What Lies Beneath: Understanding Internet Congestion
    L. Deng, A. Kuzmanovic, and B. Davie
    Technical Report NWU-EECS-07-12, Department of EECS, Northwestern University, October 2007.
    [ .pdf | .pdf.gz ]

Measurement Data

Measurement data of a large-scale Internet experiment on PlanetLab are available here. Note: The entire measurement data set (a 1.1GB compressed package) can be download here.

Software

Linux source code from the ICNP 2008 paper is available here. It has been tested on Fedora Core 4 and 5 Linux.

Software - Installation

Download WindRiderD.CAB to your phone.
Select WindRiderD.CAB and install.
Run Program Files/WindRiderD/WindRider.exe