M-Lab Platform

M-Lab's Platform

M-Lab (Measurement Lab) is a global platform that enables researchers, policymakers, and the public to measure and understand Internet performance. It provides open infrastructure for testing network speed, reliability, and connectivity, generating publicly available data on how the Internet works in practice.

To support these measurements, M-Lab operates a distributed network of servers placed in diverse locations around the world. These servers allow Internet users to run performance tests and contribute anonymized data that helps researchers study broadband quality, network congestion, and other aspects of Internet infrastructure.

Since 2008, M-Lab has focused on hosting its infrastructure in well-connected data centers where Internet service providers interconnect, allowing the platform to reach large numbers of users with high performance from relatively few locations.

In 2022, M-Lab expanded the platform to include virtual servers in cloud environments, beginning with Google Cloud. In 2025, the we began piloting the Bring Your Own Server program, a host-managed deployment model that allows network providers to run M-Lab’s software on their own infrastructure and join the global measurement platform. In these cases, M-Lab does not manage or control the servers directly.

Bring Your Own Server deployments may include physical or virtual machines located across a variety of networks, including transit providers, research and education networks, and last-mile Internet service providers.

Network providers interested in hosting an M-Lab measurement site, please review our requirements and fill out our Infrastructure Contribution Form.

Infrastructure Map

Infrastructure Map

The M-Lab infrastructure map displays basic information about platform servers around the world. Clusters of M-Lab servers are displayed as dark-blue and light-blue circles with a count of servers in the center. Clicking on a cluster will display a pop up with info about each server in the cluster. Single small dots show locations with only one server. Clicking on a single marker will display a pop up with info about that server. Double-click on the map to zoom in, or scroll in and out to zoom.

M-Lab Locate Service

The Locate Service and API provides consistent, expected measurement quality for M-Lab clients. The Locate API is a GCP hosted service that "locates" the best M-Lab server for a user request. For different use cases, "best" could mean different things. See USAGE.md and the documents below for hints on supported queries.