About

The FLOTO Center for Broadband Research — an ambitious NSF-funded initiative to advance broadband quality through large-scale, real-world data collection — stems from a collaboration between the Internet Innovation Initiative (III) and the Nimbus Group at the University of Chicago. We deploy 1000 edge devices across the United States to facilitate the collection of broadband diagnostic tests for research and policy on access network performance and development. As a result of those deployments, we have generated a publicly available dataset containing (as of June 2025) over 24M broadband performance tests, spanning 19 distinct network providers, and different access technologies (such as fiber, cable, satellite, and fixed wireless).

The software platform that manages these distributed devices also supports timed deployment of broadband diagnostic tests, such as Netrics, RADAR toolkit, M-Lab’s Measurement Swiss Army Knife (MSAK), and other applications that the research community utilizes. For more information about FLOTO applications, see our applications page. To learn more about the infrastructure that supports FLOTO, head over to the IBIS GitHub.

Applications deployed on FLOTO and the data they collect have been used to explore both technical and policy questions, specifically in advancing policy studies related to the federal Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. For example, a policy study based on data generated from FLOTO devices deployed in Marion County, IL, revealed that 32% of sampled households were below the 25/3 Mbps federal threshold, directly informing a grant application for new fiber infrastructure (see figure below). You can read this case study and others in our news blog to learn more about FLOTO’s research and policy impacts.

Box plot chart showing internet download speeds in megabits per second (Mbps) for approximately 15 sampled households in Marion County in 2023. The chart displays individual box plots for each household, with speeds ranging from near 0 Mbps to over 150 Mbps. A yellow horizontal line marks 100 Mbps and a red horizontal line marks 25 Mbps, with the area below 25 Mbps shaded in pink. The box plots show significant variation in download speeds between households, with some experiencing speeds below 10 Mbps while others exceed 150 Mbps

A Tale of Two Broadbands: FLOTO research in Marion County reveals that zip code doesn’t tell the whole story. Actual measured speeds vary by over 150 Mbps between households in the same community, affecting residents’ ability to work, learn, and access services online.

Resources

Foundational Paper: Discovery Testbed: an Observational Instrument for Broadband Research

Broadband Research:

Infrastructure Software:

  • FLOTO Dashboard – The dashboard and API for the FLOTO project.
  • FLOTO Docs – Additional documentation for FLOTO services.
  • FLOTO Worker Fleet – Definitions for the framework that runs on devices enrolled in FLOTO.
  • FLOTO Data Uploader (FLOTO Application) – This is the source to a FLOTO service that will automatically upload FLOTO data to a configurable remote source. It does this by watching a directory for changes, and then using rclone to sync the data.

Acknowledging and Citing FLOTO:

An acknowledgement of support from the FLOTO project and the National Science Foundation should appear in any publication of material, whether copyrighted or not, that describes work which benefited from access to FLOTO cyberinfrastructure resources. The suggested acknowledgement is as follows: “Results presented in this paper were obtained using the FLOTO instrument supported by the National Science Foundation”.

Published material should also cite the FLOTO paper, which makes it much easier for us to find the specific instances of research produced using FLOTO, and understand better how the instrument is used to support specific experiments. The best reference for FLOTO is:

Kate Keahey, Nick Feamster, Guilherme Martins, Mark Powers, Marc Richardson, Alexis Schrubbe, Michael Sherman. “Discovery Testbed: An Observational Instrument for Broadband Research.” In 2023 IEEE 19th International Conference on e-Science (e-Science). IEEE. Oct. 2023.

BibTex entry:

@incollection{keahey2023floto,
  title={Discovery Testbed: An Observational Instrument for Broadband Research},
  author={Kate Keahey and Nick Feamster and Guilherme Martins and Mark Powers and Marc Richardson and Alexis Schrubbe and Michael Sherman},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE 19th International Conference on e-Science (e-Science)},
  publisher={IEEE},
  month={October},
  year={2023}
}

Beyond FLOTO

FLOTO is emerging as a powerful tool for multi-sensor data collection and analysis (see FLOTO: Beyond Bandwidth – A Framework for Adaptable, Multi-sensor Data Collection in Scientific Research), opening new avenues for scientific exploration and innovation beyond broadband research. We have adapted FLOTO to support the use of peripheral sensors to support emergent applications, including edge computer vision, air quality monitoring, and precision agriculture.

FLOTO supports any Raspberry Pi-compatible peripheral through Linux dev sockets, facilitating the use of environmental sensors, cameras, and more. FLOTO’s device management dashboard simplifies peripheral installation and configuration by automatically detecting connected peripherals and requiring device owners to provide essential metadata and hardware configuration details. This enables developers to access comprehensive documentation and write applications tailored to specific peripherals. When deployed, the application accesses the necessary Linux sockets for data collection, and a customizable data uploader container allows for seamless data upload to cloud storage, showcasing FLOTO’s ability to bridge the gap between device owners and application developers for innovative IoT solutions.

See our Device Operator documentation to learn more about configuring peripherals on FLOTO devices.