Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic

• 17/05/02   We shut down Glasnost: After more than 8 years we shut down Glasnost. We thank everyone who used and supported this tool and our research. Glasnost's data and source code stays available.
• 11/28/11   Results from tests for BitTorrent traffic shaping: We released the results from recently conducted Glasnost tests for BitTorrent traffic shaping. The results page describes how you can download the raw data and the analysis scripts we used to obtain the results. We also discuss the challenges with inferring ISP policies in the face of potential measurement errors in Glasnost results.
• 11/14/11   Glasnost featured in the New York Times: Results from Glasnost tests were reported in New York Times.
• 11/01/11   Glasnost data used in research: Researchers from Syracuse University used Glasnost data to create a webpage on ISPs' BitTorrent throttling.
• 08/05/11   Improved Server Selection: Now using DONAR for server selection.
• 10/12/10   New Glasnost test: We released a new Glasnost test that measures whether your ISP prevents you from using Usenet servers to download binary data. You can find and run it below.
• 05/31/10   Create your own test: You can now create your own traffic shaping test with Glasnost. Instructions can be found here.
• 04/08/10   New Glasnost tests: We released 7 new Glasnost tests that complement our BitTorrent test. You can find and run them below.
• 03/21/10   Our paper describing Glasnost's design was accepted for publication at NSDI 2010. Read the paper here.

The goal of the Glasnost project is to make ISPs' traffic shaping policies transparent to their customers. To this end, we designed Glasnost tests that enable you to check whether traffic from your applications is being rate-limited (i.e., throttled) or blocked.

Glasnost tests work by measuring and comparing the performance of different application flows between your host and our measurement servers. The tests can detect traffic shaping in both upstream and downstream directions separately. The tests can also detect whether application flows are shaped based on their port numbers or their packets' payload. For more details on how Glasnost tests work, please read our NSDI 2010 paper.

As of Feburary 2017 Glasnost is no longer available. Glasnost is based on Java applet technology, which is no longer supported in modern browsers. Hence, after more than 8 years in operation we decided to shut down Glasnost.

Glasnost makes use of the Measurement Lab (M-Lab) research platform. To learn what information our tool collects, please go here.

 

We are researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Our research focuses on characterizing residential broadband networks and understanding their implications for the designers of future protocols and applications. In case you have questions about this tool or our research, please visit our network transparency project webpage or contact us via e-mail:

Faculty		Students		Alumni		Programmer
Krishna P. Gummadi Ratul Mahajan (Microsoft Research) Stefan Saroiu (Microsoft Research)		Marcel Dischinger Massimiliano Marcon		Saikat Guha (Microsoft Research) Andreas Haeberlen (University of Pennsylvania) Alan Mislove (North Eastern University)		Jeff Hoye