Cooperative research project proposed to study "acute and growing problems facing the Internet" in U.S.

Internet access in the U.S. is at crisis point and researchers say they need more complete and reliable data to point the way forward. The goal of the the COMMONS Project is to gather "substantial real-world data on Internet traffic at the national level ....to raise the intellectual merit of the entire field of Internet science through increased standards of data collection, curating, and sharing in the research community."

On December 12-13, 2006, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) held a workshop to discuss and ultimately propose a collaboration among researchers and networks to simultaneously solve three acute and growing problems facing the Internet: a self-reported financial crisis in the Internet infrastructure provider industry that poses a severe threat to broadband growth and U.S. competitiveness; a data acquisition crisis which has deeply stunted the field of network science; and a dilemma within emerging community, municipal, regional, and state networks, who need (additional) broadband connectivity but face severely limited provider, service level, and usage options.