Measurements with the Masses

The network measurement community has produced an impressive set of network measurement tools to which a number are added each year. A few prominent examples have seen wide-spread deployment covering large parts of the Internet but there is arguably one network segment which is extremely difficult to cover: host-to-host measurements with measurement instrumentation on "regular" end-devices. The problems in this space are manifold, but the main challenge is non-technical: incentivizing "regular" Internet citizens to take part in an experiment. In this paper, we look at the challenges, examples of measurements which involved endusers and conclude with potential actions which would make measurements involving end-users easier (but by no means easy).