A 2008 partnership between Google and academia has materialized in the form of the Measurement Lab, a service designed to uncover evidence of protocol filtering and throttling at the ISP level.

The issue of protocol management has become a prominent and contentious issue in the ongoing debate over network neutrality. Since the topic’s abrupt inception in October of 2007, a bevy of United States ISPs have moved to avoid the FCC’s wrath by releasing details of both current and pending congestion management techiques.

While academics and regulators have addressed their mounting concerns with a small array of tools, they have previously lacked both the hardware and the bandwidth to tackle the issue on a grand scale. “Researchers are already developing tools that allow users to, among other things, measure the speed of their connection, run diagnostics, and attempt to discern if their ISP is blocking or throttling particular applications,” the announcement reads. “Unfortunately, researchers lack widely-distributed servers with ample connectivity.”

Google’s M-Lab hopes to solve this material issue by providing the tools, bandwidth and datacenters to begin work on fighting the issue in earnest.

“M-Lab aims to address these problems. Over the course of early 2009, Google will provide researchers with 36 servers in 12 locations in the U.S. and Europe. All data collected via M-Lab will be made publicly available for other researchers to build on. M-Lab is intended to be a truly community-based effort, and we welcome the support of other companies, institutions, researchers, and users that want to provide servers, tools, or other resources that can help the platform flourish.”

Already available for public use, the consortium of net neutrality advocates have readied a trio of tools that will soon be joined by more. Google’s Chief Evangelist Vint Cerf hopes that these tools will shed much-needed transparency on a difficult issue. “At Google, we care deeply about sustaining the Internet as an open platform for consumer choice and innovation,” the update reads. “Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet, and, by advancing network research in this area, M-Lab aims to help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet.”