Browse All Articles

Search and filter all M-Lab knowledge base articles by topic.

Browse by tag:
Exploring Monthly Stats with Python

A practical guide to loading, filtering, and visualising M-Lab Monthly Stats parquet files in Python using pandas, without needing BigQuery or a Google Cloud account.

intermediate Data AccessResearch & Analysis
FAQ: Accessing M-Lab Data Buckets

How to access M-Lab's raw NDT7 data in Google Cloud Storage using gsutil or gcloud without permission errors.

beginner Data Access
FAQ: Docker BYOS Monitoring and Logging

Recommended Prometheus metrics endpoints and Docker logging configuration to prevent disk exhaustion on M-Lab BYOS nodes.

intermediate Node Operations
FAQ: Docker Compose Troubleshooting - Register Node Issues

Steps to diagnose and fix a stopped or unresponsive register-node component in a Docker BYOS deployment.

intermediate Node Operations
FAQ: IP Address Mismatch in BYOS Environment File

How to fix an M-Lab BYOS node that is unreachable due to a mismatch between the env file IP and the server's actual public IP.

beginner Node Operations
FAQ: Test Rate Limits

M-Lab enforces 40 tests per day per IP address. Learn what this means and how to work within the limit.

beginner Internet Quality
Integrating M-Lab Tests into Your Application

How to embed M-Lab's open source tests in a website, mobile app, or software product — and how integration partners can contribute infrastructure back to the M-Lab community.

intermediate Node Operations
M-Lab Monthly Stats: Pre-computed Parquet Summaries

What the Monthly Stats dataset is, how it's derived from NDT measurements, what the parquet files contain, and how to access them without BigQuery.

beginner Data AccessResearch & Analysis
M-Lab Network Annotations: Geolocation, ASNs, and What They Mean

How M-Lab annotates measurements with geographic and network metadata, the accuracy and limitations of each annotation type, and how to use them correctly in analysis.

intermediate Data AccessInternet Quality
MSAK (Measurement Swiss-Army Knife)

MSAK is M-Lab's configurable multi-stream throughput and UDP latency measurement service — designed for researchers and developers who need more control than single-stream NDT provides.

intermediate Data Access
Neubot DASH Streaming Test

DASH emulates a video streaming player to measure how well a network connection supports adaptive video streaming, without relying on a real video platform.

beginner Data Access
Packet Headers (PCAP) — M-Lab Core Service

M-Lab's packet-headers service captures TCP packet headers for every connection on the M-Lab platform, stored as per-flow .pcap files indexed by UUID.

advanced Data Access
Reading Percentiles in Monthly Stats

How to interpret percentile columns in M-Lab Monthly Stats data, including the counterintuitive polarity of latency and loss, and what p50 vs p95 tells you.

intermediate Data AccessInternet QualityResearch & Analysis
Reverse Traceroute

Reverse Traceroute reconstructs the network path from an M-Lab server back to a client — the direction that standard traceroute cannot see — using a distributed system of vantage points and spoofed probes.

advanced Data Access
Running Your Own M-Lab Node: The BYOS Program

An overview of M-Lab's Bring Your Own Server program — what it is, what's required, and how hosting a node contributes to global internet measurement.

intermediate Node Operations
TCP INFO — M-Lab Core Service

TCP INFO collects detailed TCP socket statistics from the Linux kernel for every connection on the M-Lab platform, capturing congestion control state, RTT, loss, and dozens of other metrics at regular intervals.

advanced Data Access
Traceroute — M-Lab Core Service

M-Lab's Traceroute core service automatically runs a network path measurement from every M-Lab server back to the client for every TCP connection, building a continuous record of Internet routing.

intermediate Data Access
Understanding Speed Test Results

Why different speed tests produce different results, and what those differences reveal about your internet connection.

beginner Measurement Tools
WeHe — Traffic Differentiation Detection

WeHe tests whether your ISP is treating traffic from specific apps (like YouTube or Spotify) differently from other traffic — detecting throttling or blocking on a per-application basis.

intermediate Data Access