TY - GEN
T1 - Helping users shop for ISPs with internet nutrition labels
AU - Sundaresan, Srikanth
AU - Feamster, Nick
AU - Teixeira, Renata
AU - Tang, Anthony
AU - Edwards, W. Keith
AU - Grinter, Rebecca E.
AU - Chetty, Marshini
AU - De Donato, Walter
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - When purchasing home broadband access from Internet service providers (ISPs), users must decide which service plans are most appropriate for their needs. Today, ISPs advertise their available service plans using only generic upload and download speeds. Unfortunately, these metrics do not always accurately reflect the varying performance that home users will experience for a wide range of applications. In this paper, we propose that each ISP service plan carry a "nutrition label" that conveys more comprehensive information about network metrics along many dimensions, including various aspects of throughput, latency, loss rate, and jitter. We first justify why these metrics should form the basis of a network nutrition label. Then, we demonstrate that current plans that are superficially similar with respect to advertised download rates may have different performance according to the label metrics. We close with a discussion of the challenges involved in presenting a nutrition label to users in a way that is both accurate and easy to understand.
AB - When purchasing home broadband access from Internet service providers (ISPs), users must decide which service plans are most appropriate for their needs. Today, ISPs advertise their available service plans using only generic upload and download speeds. Unfortunately, these metrics do not always accurately reflect the varying performance that home users will experience for a wide range of applications. In this paper, we propose that each ISP service plan carry a "nutrition label" that conveys more comprehensive information about network metrics along many dimensions, including various aspects of throughput, latency, loss rate, and jitter. We first justify why these metrics should form the basis of a network nutrition label. Then, we demonstrate that current plans that are superficially similar with respect to advertised download rates may have different performance according to the label metrics. We close with a discussion of the challenges involved in presenting a nutrition label to users in a way that is both accurate and easy to understand.
KW - Access networks
KW - BISMark
KW - Benchmarking
KW - Broadband networks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80052603560&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=80052603560&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2018567.2018571
DO - 10.1145/2018567.2018571
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:80052603560
SN - 9781450307987
T3 - Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Home Networks, HomeNets'11
SP - 13
EP - 18
BT - Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Home Networks, HomeNets'11
T2 - 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Home Networks, HomeNets'11
Y2 - 15 August 2011 through 19 August 2011
ER -