“Google plans to provide tools to let individual users of broadband services analyze how their providers are managing traffic, so they can object to traffic discrimination if they find it.

Speaking at a panel discussion of net neutrality issues, Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said that neutral networks were vital to innovation and that individual network users should make their views known on the subject. “If the broadband providers aren’t going to tell you exactly what’s happening on their networks,” Whitt said, “we want to give users the power to find out for themselves….We’re trying to develop software tools…that allow people to detect what’s happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they’re not happy with what they’re getting — that they think certain services are being tampered with.”

Whitt wouldn’t say when these tools would be available – or how they will operate.”

the success of the crowdsourcing exercise will depend on the minimizing the hassle needed to run it from the user-end will

The other main thing is it’s possible to automate uploads and downloads from a mail server. And it’s also possible to automate the uploading of the statstics to the website without asking the attention of the user.

It would be ideal if the program could be designed to a “single-click” mechanism, where everything is automated and the user just has to watch the tests being done. Minimizing the hassle needed to run it from the user-end will obviously depend on the success of the crowdsourcing exercise.

P.S. The new webdesign sucks. I”m running on a 1680*1050 resolution and everything looks stretched out and bulky.