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.traceroute).
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/.

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.

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Prof. Luciano Lenzini

Department of Information Engineering

University of Pisa, Italy

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

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