Google, in cooperation with academic researchers, the New America Foundation and the PlanetLab Consortium, have launched Measurement Lab (M-Lab). Measurement Lab is a suite of tools dedicated to helping broadband customers determine what kind of throttling or protocol discrimination their ISP is employing, presumably letting them make an intelligent decision when shopping between ISPs -- assuming they have a choice. The suite was unveiled today by Google's Vint Cerf, who before Google, co-created the TCP/IP protocol.

While there have been a flurry of such tools in the past, many were unreliable, and providing both the bandwidth and hardware to keep them running effectively gets costly. Enter Google. The search giant says that by the end of 2009, they'll provide researchers with bandwidth and 36 servers in 12 locations across the United States and Europe as part of an effort to improve the tools, create new ones, and coordinate and store the data.

More substantive data will not only help create more educated consumers, but it will certainly help Google as they go to bat in Washington against major carriers and their lobbyists. Companies like AT&T and Comcast already see Google as public enemy number one for a number of reasons, not least of which are Google's efforts to open up the broadband sector to protocol-neutral competition (less discrimination + more competitors + more users = more ads and more money).

At the moment, Google and company are offering three tools:

The Network Diagnostic Tool tests the end user's speed while determining network problems. NDT servers collect user IP addresses, connection speed, packet headers and TCP variables for each test. Glasnost (an existing tool developed in Germany which we've reported on previously) tests to see if your ISP is slowing BitTorrent connections. The Network Path and Application Diagnosis (NPAD) is an additional tool to diagnose (and presumably rule out) last mile and user system problems.

M-Lab says two additional tools should arrive shortly. DiffProbe attempts to detect if an Internet access provider is classifying certain kinds of traffic as "low priority," providing it with an inferior level of service (which would obviously address the new de-prioritization systems by Comcast and Cox). Nano will attempt to detect whether an ISP is degrading the performance of a certain subset of users, applications, or destinations. The well-funded game of network cat and mouse is afoot.

Regardless of how you feel about network management, the coalition says they believe that consumers should have the right to clearly understand the exact nature of the connection they're paying for. If ISPs don't want to clearly inform customers, Google, with the help of global academics and their deep pockets, is apparently going to do it for them.