The FCC launches a "beta" consumer broadband test on broadband.gov on March 11th. The site uses Measurement Lab (M-Lab) as its back-end platform. M-Lab is a private deployment of PlanetLab spanning 15 sites across the US and Europe.

PlanetLab Central (PLC) will be upgraded to Version 4.3 over the next few weeks. 4.3 includes features that will make it easier to support new types of nodes (e.g., wireless), as well as new GUI features. It also involves a few changes to the programmatic API. Users that run scripts against this API will need to modify those scripts. Click here for a summary of the API changes.

The PlanetLab Consortium joins Google and the Open Technology Institute in creating Measurement Lab (M-Lab), a distributed server platform for deploying Internet measurement tools. M-Lab is designed to empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections.

A paper describing our experiences operating PlanetLab over the past six years, and in particular, how we resolved disputes involving PlanetLab experiments, is now available (here) for review and comment.

A prototype implementation of the GENI interfaces to PlanetLab functionality is now available. The module, called geniwrapper, is available at http://svn.planet-lab.org/. Preliminary testing of geniwrapper on the live system will begin in the next few weeks.

To help track the status of nodes at your site, we have created a Google Gadget that reports the last observed status of your machine and the last time the status changed. Please give it a try, and if there's a feature you can think of that would make maintaining PlanetLab nodes easier, let us know at support@planet-lab.org. Add the gadget to your google home page by clicking on the button:

The PlanetLab 4.2 Upgrade is underway! At the end of the upgrade all machines will be re-installed and include the following new features:

• Reference image changed from Fedora Core 4, to Fedora 8.
• Upgrade kernel from 2.6.12 to 2.6.22.19 and VServer from 2.0 to 2.3
• SMP support!
• Adding Vsys as a replacement for Proper
• Upgraded PlanetFlow
• Allow multiple VServer reference images
• New kernel features (ipv6, fuse, chopstix, kvm) available for the future.

Follow the 'read more' link to see the schedule.

PlanetLab is engaged in a federation trial with the OneLab Project. The plan is to migrate European nodes and slices to an independent EU authority. Follow the federation link to learn more.

PlanetLab Operations is developing a new tool, called Site Assistant, to help sites keep their nodes running and connected to PlanetLab. In addition, we will begin running a program called Monitor to notify a Site's Technical Contact and PI about observed problems with registered PlanetLab machines. The set of machines affected will be increased gradually. For additional details on when your machines will be affected, please see the Deployment Schedule. As well, for details on the policy that Monitor implements to encourage continued site participation, please see Monitor Policy.

A series of international workshops on Real Overlays and Distributed Systems (ROADS) is being scheduled, with initial meetings in Belem (June 1, 2007) and Warsaw (July 11-12, 2007).