TY - GEN
T1 - A Worldwide Look Into Mobile Access Networks Through the Eyes of AmiGos
AU - Varvello, Matteo
AU - Zaki, Yasir
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IFIP.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - How does the mobile experience compare between Germany and Nigeria? There is currently no public data or test-bed to provide an answer to this question. This is because deploying and maintaining such test-bed can be both challenging and expensive. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a novel test-bed design called 'AmiGo', which relies on travelers carrying mobile phones to act as vantage points and collect data on mobile network performance. The AmiGo design has three key advantages: it is easy to deploy, has realistic user mobility, and runs on real Android devices. We further developed a suite of measurement tools for AmiGo to perform network measurements, e.g., pings, speedtests, and webpage loads. We leverage these tools to measure the performance of 24 mobile networks across five continents over a month via an AmiGo deployment involving 31 students. We find that 50% of networks face a 40-70% chance of providing low data rates, only 20% achieve low latencies, and networks in Asia, Central/South America, and Africa have significantly higher CDN download times than in Europe. Most news websites load slowly, while YouTube performs well. We made both test-bed and measurement tools open source.
AB - How does the mobile experience compare between Germany and Nigeria? There is currently no public data or test-bed to provide an answer to this question. This is because deploying and maintaining such test-bed can be both challenging and expensive. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a novel test-bed design called 'AmiGo', which relies on travelers carrying mobile phones to act as vantage points and collect data on mobile network performance. The AmiGo design has three key advantages: it is easy to deploy, has realistic user mobility, and runs on real Android devices. We further developed a suite of measurement tools for AmiGo to perform network measurements, e.g., pings, speedtests, and webpage loads. We leverage these tools to measure the performance of 24 mobile networks across five continents over a month via an AmiGo deployment involving 31 students. We find that 50% of networks face a 40-70% chance of providing low data rates, only 20% achieve low latencies, and networks in Asia, Central/South America, and Africa have significantly higher CDN download times than in Europe. Most news websites load slowly, while YouTube performs well. We made both test-bed and measurement tools open source.
KW - mobile
KW - performance
KW - testbed
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85168769746&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85168769746&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.23919/TMA58422.2023.10198920
DO - 10.23919/TMA58422.2023.10198920
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85168769746
T3 - TMA 2023 - Proceedings of the 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference
BT - TMA 2023 - Proceedings of the 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 7th Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference, TMA 2023
Y2 - 26 June 2023 through 29 June 2023
ER -