[mat-wg] PORTOLAN: A Mobile Crowdsourcing Measurement System

Dear All, 
The University of Pisa and IIT, an Institute of the Italian National
Research Council, have developed a mobile crowdsourcing-based system, named
PORTOLAN which uses smartphones as mobile monitors probing the Internet and
reporting results to a central server located in Pisa. The aim of PORTOLAN
is to enhance the current topology of the Internet at the Autonomous System
level of abstraction - all with the contribution of volunteers. 

The PORTOLAN component that runs on smartphones is now available as an app
for the Android platform. It can be downloaded by users from Google play (
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.unipi.iet.portolan.tracero
ute>
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.unipi.iet.portolan.tracerou
te).
PORTOLAN works in the background, it is designed not to interfere in any way
with users' activities and does not affect the smartphone's overall
performance. In order to motivate users to contribute to the PORTOLAN
project, we have added several services, which include diagnostic network
tools (such as Ping, Paris Traceroute with Multipath Detection Algorithm,
Maximum Throughput achievable along a path, etc.) and coverage measurement
tools. All the tools are totally under the user's control. Data collected by
these tools are stored in our servers, in a completely anonymous way. For
details see  <http://portolan.iet.unipi.it/> http://portolan.iet.unipi.it/.

The success of our experiment depends upon the number of users who join the
experiment. But to get people to download the app, we really need to raise
as much awareness as possible regarding the PORTOLAN itself.
So I would like to ask you if it would be possible for you to forward this
message to your colleagues, students and anyone else who you think might be
interested.

Many thanks in advance for your cooperation.

All the best,
Luciano

TECHNICAL NOTE: In PORTOLAN, each smartphone issues at max 200 traceroutes
per day, which means a peak traffic rate never higher than 1 KB/s and an
average traffic rate never higher than 2 MB/day. The impact of these
activities on the battery consumption is negligible. Signal coverage
measurements are completely costless in terms of energy or bandwidth, as the
PORTOLAN app passively collects signal strength samples using GPS positions
generated by other apps. You have to activate the GPS yourself if you want a
coverage map along your route. Given that your route could be up to 50 km or
more, then you will obviously use up quite a bit of your battery power. So
if you are travelling, then connect your smartphone to a powersource in your
car or in the train. In any case, if the battery level goes under 40%,
PORTOLAN is automatically suspended.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------

Prof. Luciano Lenzini

Department of Information Engineering

University of Pisa, Italy

e-mail: l.lenzini at iet.unipi.it

http://www.iet.unipi.it/~lenzini 

 

 

 

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