KENET launches first Internet measurements lab in Africa

The National Research and Educational Network in Kenya (KENET) was established in 1999 as a membership institution for educational and research institutions. With a data centre in the University of Nairobi and a mirror data centre in the United States International University, KENET provides cost-effective Internet connectivity to all member universities and university colleges (115 campuses) in Kenya.

KENET has partnered with the Measurements Lab Project (M-Lab) to advance broadband Internet research and to facilitate access to useful information about the speed and quality of broadband connections in Kenya, which will support the Regulator and broadband Internet policy researchers.

In February 2013, in collaboration with the Measurements Lab Project and Google, KENET has set up the first Internet measurements lab (M-Lab) site in Africa.

The Measurement Lab node will enable Internet users and researchers in Kenya to test their broadband connections, measure their connection speeds and quality of connections. M-lab global servers record approximately 250,000 tests daily on the open server platform and the data collected on the M-lab platform is open for students, researchers, policy makers and individuals to analyse and help in the development of the Internet.

M-Lab is a collaborative effort led by researchers in partnership with companies and other institutions still at the beginning of its development and five tools are currently available, running on 45 servers in 15 sites. M-Lab depends on the active support of additional partners including Google and Internet2 among others. The platform allows researchers to build and test Internet measurement tools that can be uploaded on the platform and tested.

The M-lab site at KENET consists of servers supplied by Google and co0located at KENET data center with a 1 Gbps connection to the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP) and at least 50 Mbps connection to the global Internet provided by KENET. Built on openly available and reliable Internet measurement tools, the setup will provide users with a myriad of tests that will include bandwidth throughput, congestion, latency, quality of service and jitter etc. Other indicators include cabling faults, duplex mismatch, detection of network address translation (NAT) and traffic shaping on an Internet connection.