{"66057":{"#nid":"66057","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Kermit Helps Households Monitor and Manage Their Internet Speed","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EFor years, the relationship\nbetween Internet service provider and home user has been a simple,\nall-you-can-eat model: Pay a flat monthly fee and enjoy all the broadband you\nwant, every byte of which streams at those fantastic speeds the ISPs advertise.\nRight?\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EMaybe, maybe not. Now, as the\nnation\u2019s largest providers prepare to implement usage-based pricing plans, a\ntool created by Georgia Tech researchers could empower consumers to ensure they\nare getting the service they are paying for.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDeveloped by Beki Grinter, an\nassociate professor in Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Interactive Computing, and her\nteam, Kermit is an easy-to-use application that allows users to monitor and\ncontrol network usage within their home environment, including measuring the\nactual network speed made available by their Internet service providers (ISPs)\nand tracking bandwidth usage over time.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI think it\u2019s widely recognized\nnow, and the FCC is [aware], that people are not getting the speeds that are\nsometimes advertised,\u201d Grinter said. \u201cWhat Kermit does is it makes that very\nvisible to people in their homes.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EKermit is being presented\nWednesday, May 11, at the CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing,\nheld in Vancouver. The paper it is based on, \u201cWhy Is My Internet Slow? Making\nNetwork Speeds Visible,\u201d was one of 13 to be awarded CHI 2011 Best Paper.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EKermit works by showing the user a\nsimple view of all the home\u2019s devices connected to the Internet: computers, mobile\ndevices, digital video recorders, game systems or anything else that\u2019s\nnetworked. Users can rename their devices, or label them with photos to show\nwhat they are. At any moment, Kermit can not only show who\u2019s using the\nInternet, whether through a desktop or mobile device, but it can also limit a\ndevice\u2019s speed. The user can even limit or prioritize a specific machine\u2019s\ntraffic.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003ETo test the system, researchers\nrecruited a select number of users, most of whom were not overly savvy with\ncomputers or networking technology, to take Kermit home and try it out.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cEven people who were not Internet\ngurus tried to do this,\u201d said Kermit developer Marshini Chetty, a Ph.D.\ncandidate at Georgia Tech and first author of the CHI paper. \u201cWith one\nhusband-and-wife couple, the wife actually limited her husband\u2019s machine\nbecause she worked from home. Before, she wouldn\u2019t have gone to the router Web\ninterface to do that, but because Kermit made it easier for her, she was\nfeeling more comfortable to do it. Of course, her husband didn\u2019t really like\nthat.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to providing real-time\ninformation, Kermit allows users to view historical data on their Internet\nconnection such as how much bandwidth different machines use over time, making\nit easier to spot patterns\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cAfter we gave them Kermit, they\nwere able to see the speeds over time,\u201d Chetty said. \u201cSo, by the end of the\nstudy, they started to question: \u2018Am I getting what I paid for?\u2019 Or they knew a\nlittle bit more about it and realized, yes, they were actually getting what\nthey paid for. I think Kermit was successful in actually making them more\ninformed about these issues, which is one of our goals.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EStudy participants also had some\nof their own ideas for Kermit.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cA lot of parents said that they\nwould like to use Kermit to schedule access for their kids,\u201d Chetty said. \u201cIn\none household, for example, a mom and dad talked about how their son always\nused the Xbox past midnight, and they didn\u2019t want to stay up to make sure he\nstopped because they had to get up for work the next day. So they saw a use for\nKermit to basically set up a time restriction so that their son would automatically\nbe cut off at midnight.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\u003Cp\u003EFor the next study, the\nresearchers plan to implement some of the suggestions participants made such as\nthe ability to cut off specific users\u2019 access completely. They also plan to\ndevelop more tools to help users track and manage their bandwidth usage \u2013 a\nfeature that\u2019s increasingly more important as ISPs introduce data caps on home\nInternet connections.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EArticle written by David Terraso.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDeveloped by Beki Grinter, an\nassociate professor in Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Interactive Computing, and her\nteam, Kermit is an easy-to-use application that allows users to monitor and\ncontrol network usage within their home environment, including measuring the\nactual network speed made available by their Internet service providers (ISPs)\nand tracking bandwidth usage over time.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A tool created by Georgia Tech researchers could empower consumers to ensure they are getting the service they are paying for."}],"uid":"27462","created_gmt":"2011-05-10 08:20:23","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:08:41","author":"Liz Klipp","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2011-05-10T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2011-05-10T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"66058":{"id":"66058","type":"image","title":"Kermit","body":null,"created":"1449176916","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:08:36","changed":"1475894587","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:43:07","alt":"Kermit","file":{"fid":"193277","name":"kermit-001.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kermit-001.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/kermit-001.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1729534,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/kermit-001.jpg?itok=msX7eQTp"}}},"media_ids":["66058"],"groups":[{"id":"1183","name":"Home"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"13097","name":"Beki Grinter"},{"id":"13099","name":"CHI 2011"},{"id":"654","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"13098","name":"Internet speed"},{"id":"9065","name":"kermit"},{"id":"12086","name":"Marshini Chetty"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["klipp@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}