Marshini Chetty
David Haslem
Rebecca Grinter
ABSTRACT
With widespread broadband adoption, more households report experiencing sub-optimal speeds. Not only are slow speeds frustrating, they may indicate consumers are not receiving the services they are paying for from their internet service providers. Yet, determining the speed and source of slow-downs is difficult because few tools exist for broadband management. We report on results of a field trial with 10 households using a visual network probe designed to address these problems. We describe the results of the study and provide design implications for future tools. More importantly, we argue that tools like this can educate and empower consumers by making broadband speeds and sources of slow-downs more visible.
- Akamai, 4th Quarter 2009: The State of the Internet, 2009.Google Scholar
- Chetty, M., Banks, R., Harper, R., Regan, T., Sellen, A., Gkantsidis, C., Karagiannis, T. and Key, P. Who's Hogging the Bandwidth?: The Consequences of Revealing the Invisible in the Home CHI 2010, ACM, Atlanta, GA, USA, 2010, 659--668. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chetty, M., Sung, J. and Grinter, R. E. How Smart Homes Learn: The Evolution of the Networked Home and Household Ubicomp 2007, Springer-Verlag, Innsbruck, Austria, 2007, 127--144. Google ScholarDigital Library
- dd-wrt.com. http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index, 2010.Google Scholar
- DiSalvo, C., Sengers, P. and Brynjarsdóttir, H. Mapping the landscape of sustainable HCI CHI 2010, ACM, Atlanta, GA, 2010, 1975--1984. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dischinger, M., Haeberlen, A., Gummadi, K. P. and Saroiu, S. Characterizing Residential Broadband Networks SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, ACM, 2007, 43--56. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dourish, P. HCI and Environmental Sustainability: The Politics of Design and the Design of Politics DIS 2010, ACM, Aarhus, Denmark, 2010, 1--10. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Federal Communications Commission, Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan, 2010.Google Scholar
- Federal Communications Commission, Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2009, 2010.Google Scholar
- Goth, G., The Global Net Neutrality Debate Back to Square One, IEEE Internet Computing 14, 4 (2010), 7--9. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Grinter, R. E., Edwards, W. K., Chetty, M., Shehan-Poole, E., Sung, J., Yang, J., Crabtree, A., Tolmie, P., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C. and Benford, S., The Ins and Outs of Home Networking: The Case for Useful and Usable Domestic Networking., ACM Trans. Computer-Human Interaction 16, 2 (2009), Article 8. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gross, G. Consumer groups protest industry net neutrality talks IDG News Service\Washington Bureau, 2010.Google Scholar
- Ho, J. T., Dearman, D. and Truong, K. N. Improving Users' Security Choices on Home Wireless Networks SOUPS 2010, ACM, Redmond, WA, 2010, Article 12. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hutchinson, H., Mackay, W., Westerlund, B., Bederson, B. B., Druin, A., Plaisant, C., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Conversy, S., Evans, H., Hansen, H., Roussel, N. and Eiderbäck, B. Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families CHI 2003, ACM, Ft Lauderdale, Florida, 2003, 17--24. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joch, A., "Debating net neutrality," Communications of the ACM 52, 10 (2009), 14--15. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jordan, S., "Implications of Internet Architecture on Net Neutrality," ACM Trans. Internet Technology 9, 2 (2009), 1--28. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Max Planck Institute for Software Systems. Glasnost: Bringing Transparency to the Internet, http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/, 2010.Google Scholar
- New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute & The PlanetLab Consortium & Google Inc. Measurement Lab, 2010.Google Scholar
- Ofcom, UK Broadband Speeds, May 2010. The performance of fixed-line broadband delivered to UK residential consumers, 2010.Google Scholar
- Pew Internet & American Life Project, The Broadband Difference: How online American's behavior changes with high-speed internet connections at home, 2002.Google Scholar
- Raghavendra, R. and Belding, E. M. Characterizing High-bandwidth Real-time Video Traffic in Residential Broadband Networks WiOpt, IEEE, Avignon, France, 2010, 597--602.Google Scholar
- Rode, J. A. Digital Parenting: Designing Children's Safety HCI 2009 - People and Computers XXIII - Celebrating people and technology, British Computer Society, 2009, 244--251. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shehan-Poole, E., Chetty, M., Grinter, R. E. and Edwards, W. K. More than Meets the Eye: Transforming the User Experience of Home Network Management DIS 2008, ACM, Cape Town, South Africa, 2008, 455--464. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shehan-Poole, E., Chetty, M., Morgan, T., Grinter, R. E. and Edwards, W. K. Computer Help At Home: Methods and Motivations for Informal Technical Support CHI 2009, ACM, Boston, USA, 2009, 739--748. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Strauss, A. and Corbin, J., Basics of Qualitative Research Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Sage Publications, London, 1998.Google Scholar
- Sundaresan, S., DiCioccio, L., Feamster, N. and Teixeira, R., Which Factors Affect Access Network Performance? Georgia Institute of Technology Technical Report GT-CS-10-04, 2010.Google Scholar
- Tolmie, P., Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C. and Benford, S. Making the Home Network At Home: Digital Housekeeping ECSCW 2007, Springer London, Limerick, Ireland, 2007, 331--350.Google Scholar
- Wallsten, S., Understanding International Broadband Comparisons Update 2009. Technology Policy Institute: Studying the Global Information Economy, 2009.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Why is my internet slow?: making network speeds visible
Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.
Recommendations
Broadband speed and unemployment rates: Data and measurement issues
AbstractWe examine the effects of broadband speed on county unemployment rates in the U.S. state of Tennessee. We merge the older National Broadband Map dataset and the newer FCC dataset in lengthening our broadband access data over the period ...
Highlights- We examine the effects of broadband speed on county unemployment rates in the U.S. state of Tennessee.
Exploring the differences in broadband access speeds across Glasgow
Demonstrates how broadband speeds have changed over time.Draws attention to the different broadband speeds that occur across the city.Highlights the range of factors that determine broadband speeds.Links slower broadband speeds with deprived areas. It ...
Comments