How's My Network? A Java Approach to Home Network Measurement

As part of a project to develop a user-centered network measurement platform that limits impediments to participation, this work focuses on using the execution of a signed Java applet for home network measurement. We have developed a Java applet tool to understand the capabilities of such a tool for measuring characteristics of a user's network environment from the browser. This paper reports on the capabilities of the tool, the measurement methodology employed, and initial results obtained for a set of residential users employing the tool. Despite the sandbox-type restrictions in Java, the results include information about the configuration of the user's testing machine, wireless connectivity of the testing machine, available upload and download throughput, DNS performance and the number and type of devices on the user's network.