Measuring the Internet

Don’t miss out! On 16 July at 5 PM UTC, David Belson will host a panel on Internet resilience at the State of the Internet virtual summit. Learn more.

The global Internet is comprised of independent networks that connect to one another. Its distributed nature makes measuring any aspect of the Internet on a global scale difficult. There are many people, projects and organizations collecting data on various facets of the Internet, but there’s no single site or tool that provides a curated set of insights – until now.

What we’re doing

To help everyone gain deeper insight into the Internet, we’re building a tool that consolidates trusted third-party Internet measurement data from various sources into a single platform. We’ll use this data to examine trends, generate reports, and tell data-driven stories.

The platform will be available to everyone, everywhere so that policymakers, researchers, journalists, network operators, civil society groups and others can better understand the health, availability, and evolution of the Internet. We aim to have the platform online by the end of 2020.

Focus areas

We’ve identified four focus areas for the platform:

Internet Shutdowns

The data we’ll present will help to establish a framework for measuring the frequency, duration, and network reach of Internet shutdowns, with accompanying analysis and reporting. We’ll also crowdsource first-hand accounts and insights from the local community to explore how the shutdown is affecting local populations.

Enabling Technologies

New technologies are essential to allow the Internet to keep growing and evolving to meet the changing expectations of users. We’ll identify these technologies, why they’re important for the future of the Internet and track their adoption across networks and countries. Technologies that contribute to improving Internet scalability, security, trust and availability will be our focus.

Internet Resilience

A resilient Internet connection is one that maintains an acceptable level of service in the face of faults and challenges to normal operation. We’ll track resiliency metrics to help support the development of policies and infrastructure to improve Internet resilience at the local, regional and global level.

Internet Way of Networking (IWON)

To support and promote the IWON, we’ll track metrics and present data based on the IWON framework’s critical Internet properties to help inform policy and legislation. By tracking these metrics over time we hope to better understand the health of the Internet Way of Networking.

As we want to make our platform available as soon as possible, we’ll initially launch with the first two focus areas, Internet Shutdowns and Enabling Technologies.

Our Work in 2020

Building a Platform: Work has started on developing a tool to collate data from multiple trusted sources in one place. We’ll launch the platform by the end of the year.
Building Partnerships: We’re establishing partnerships with organizations that are collecting and contributing Internet measurement data, as well as soliciting feedback from community members who will use and share the insights that we’ll present.

Get Involved

We’re eager to collaborate with organizations that collect Internet measurement data. If you’re collecting data that tracks the adoption of specific protocols across the Internet or data that reveals the occurrence and impacts of Internet disruptions, please get in touch.