the U.S. FCC is trying to improve the way it measures broadband penetration, though the primary mode of measurement is still gathering data from the providers themselves. some meta-data on how the big three (verizon, att, tw) track penetration of their network infrastructures for the last year:
CAIDA, ISC, OARC, and The Measurement Factory managed to repeat our annual Day in the Life of the Internet data collection experiment this year — using a 2-day window of 18-19 March 2008. As with last year’s DITL (DITL2007 announcement, DITL2007 summary), we tried to capture a complete 48-hour interval of traffic to as many DNS root nameservers as could participate, and also invited other data providers to participate on terms compatible with their data sharing policies. if you engage in ongoing measurement of an operational network, and collected data for some or all of 18-19 mar 2008, it’s not too late to contribute data or metadata to DITL2008!
one of my favorite program managers is posed the following question by senior management at his defense-related funding agency: “we should be able to do a much better job modeling internet attacks. what research can we fund that would enable us to do a better job at modeling internet attacks?”