Internet Society to measure and display quality of Internet connections around the world with Netradar app

The Internet Society and Aalto University are launching a new collaboration to measure the diversity of Internet access around the world. Internet access is becoming increasingly mobile and the next billion users will experience the Internet in new ways from those already online. The experience of Internet connectivity is far from uniform, and observing the variety of connectivity, and how it is changing over time is important. Smartphone users around the globe can download the app and contribute their measurements to a global picture of Internet diversity and evolution.

Results are displayed on the map at www.internetsociety.org/netradar

Netradar is a free service that provides neutral and accurate information about the quality and diversity (in terms of bandwidth and latency) of Internet connections and mobile devices, collected by the end users themselves anonymously around the world. Results are presented on maps of network connectivity and performance.

"One of the tremendous benefits of Internet technology is the ability to connect diverse networks together. With Netradar we hope to expose and share some of that diversity and also to study over time how the Internet is changing. Globally, the number of users in developing countries now exceeds those in developed countries and there are now more mobile broadband subscribers than fixed. The Internet Society is focused on ensuring the sustainability and reliability of the Internet and Netradar will help us to understand the scope and impact of these changes. It's very exciting to be launching this collaboration with Aalto University," said Phil Roberts, Acting Chief Internet Technology Officer at the Internet Society.

"The Netradar service has been extremely popular in Finland and the public performance maps and statistics of networks are becoming very accurate. This collaboration with the Internet Society will help researchers and Internet users study the evolution of mobile Internet and form an even more accurate model of network quality worldwide", said Professor Jukka Manner from Aalto University, who leads the Netradar team.

The Netradar application is available for Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Symbian, Meego, Maemo, Jolla and Blackberry platforms.

When users run the application they are presented with data about the quality of their connectivity and this data is simultaneously uploaded to the Netradar database. No personal information, such as names or addresses, is gathered by the system. It is not necessary to have an account or login to use the system. The Netradar client has been installed over 120,000 times and the database currently holds over 3 million measurements.