We haven’t defined a specific Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for Community-Lab but we endorse the Planet-Lab AUP as Community-Lab shares most of the assumptions with Planet-Lab. You can read the shorter version of the AUP from Planet-Lab.org or the more elaborate AUP from Planet-Lab.eu.
Similarly to Measurement-Lab, community networks are production broadband networks. Even though we care for privacy of personal data and network stability by design of the testbed nodes, experimenters using Community-Lab should follow the privacy policy and guidelines of Measurement-Lab.
Similarly to Planet-Lab, Community-Lab is not a “testbed” in the usual sense of a controlled environment for experiments. It consists of computer nodes and network links hosted by organizations (principally community IP networks) that donate their own time, locations, links and network connectivity for the good of the community. The testbed is embedded in several community networks that are production networks.
By setting up an experiment you become a temporary member of the community networks involved, as you’re borrowing community resources for your experiment. You should follow the local rules (membership rules or peering agreements) that apply to its members: Guifi.net agreement, FunkFeuer agreement, AWMN (basic network neutrality rules).
As with Planet-Lab, a good litmus test when considering whether an experiment is appropriate for Community-Lab is to ask what the network administrator at your organization or your at your home would say about the experiment running on your local site. If the experiment disrupts local activity (e.g., uses more than its share of your site’s Internet bandwidth) or triggers complaints from remote network administrators (e.g., performs systematic port scans), then it is not appropriate for Community-Lab. It is your responsibility to ensure that your use of Community-Lab falls within these constraints. This means you should debug your code in a controlled environment so you have confidence that you understand its behavior.
Privacy policy
Derived from Measurement Lab, can apply to data from experiments that involve end users that include measurements:
Community-Lab is a platform for the use of independent tools created by researchers to gather information relevant to bottom-up broadband (another name for community networks) services. The goal of the project is to analyze information regarding bottom-up broadband networks and report this information to the public.
By accessing one of the tools, you will generate and send some data back-and-forth with an M-Lab server. The tools collect data related to the particular communication “flows” generated by the client-server test. This includes IP address. These data will be used and analyzed by researchers and, in order to advance research, these data will be made publicly available. These client-server tools do not collect personal information on Community-Lab servers, such as your Internet traffic, your emails and Web searches.
Some researchers may offer client-server tests that use Community-Lab, combined with separate components that measure other Internet traffic and do not rely on Community-Lab. These tools will only report the client-server test data back to Community-lab and will not report any data about your other Internet traffic back to the Community-Lab servers. That data will go directly to the researcher responsible for the tool.
Client-server test information collected by researchers may be separately maintained by the partner entities, but only in aid of the Community-Lab project’s research.
Researchers may ask you for personal information in furtherance of their efforts, including contact information. Before public release, contact and other personal information is viewed or analyzed only by the researchers. The conditions of gathering, use and release of such personal information is governed by your relationship with a given researcher and is independent of the partner entities of Community-Lab. Please use discretion when providing sensitive information.