Wehe

Northeastern University Wehe Project

About this app

Wehe is an app that runs tests against your network and analyzes the results to let you know if your network provider is restricting or prioritizing traffic for certain applications and certain ports.

By performing free tests with Wehe on your mobile device, you are participating in an IRB-approved research project at Northeastern University (led by Dr. David Choffnes) and you are helping to identify potential violations of net neutrality. Note that no conclusion can be drawn from an individual result of the type "Differentiation detected" to characterize a breach of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 on Open Internet.

As net neutrality regulations vary according to location, Wehe collects coarse-grained geolocation data (with a precision of 0.1 degrees latitude/longitude) if users explicitly opt in to providing it. Wehe never collects fine-grained geolocation information. Wehe also collects IP addresses, which are stored as truncated data so they cannot be tied to individuals. As such, all the collected data are deidentified to guarantee the protection of personal data. The deidentified data are published as open data to let third parties reproduce the conclusions of the tests carried out. Finally, Wehe uses servers located around the world, including ones hosted by Measurement Lab (M-Lab). M-Lab collects additional measurement data from clients, but does so in a way that is consistent with Wehe’s protections against collecting personal data. Note that the set of servers and hosts may change over time, but our privacy policy and data protection practices remain the same.

No personal data are either transferred, or exchanged, or rented. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) n°2016/679, please note that you have the right to oppose, access, rectify, delete, limit or transfer your personal data.

For more details about the app, the research behind it, and analysis of data collected about net neutrality violations, please visit: https://wehe.meddle.mobi/.

Ratings and reviews

The application works but more instructions are needed. I ran the application out of the box against twitch. It reported there was no differentiation. Ran it 3x and same thing. Open the twitch app, buffering like crazy, so I can see the throttling. Run the test while streaming and it saw the exact differentiation 700kb vs my 6mbs. Which I verified externally.

***Edit: No longer works at all, even at 227 Mbps. Hey Brandon C, not everyone has the same circumstances as you, capiche? *** Slow, but incredibly useful. Rarely if ever updated. But everyone should know about this app, much like Ookla Speedtest. If they did, maybe mobile companies wouldn't throttle so indiscriminately and dishonestly. Would be very useful if the app was updated to detect 0 or extremely poor connections. Under those conditions, it either doesn't work or seems not to work.

Downloaded on Google Pixel 3 XL with Sprint LTE sim card on 2/26/19. All of the tests say "Analysis server unavailable." They seem to run all the way through, but never report any results. I would have really liked to use the results in an informative presentation about the implications of net neutrality being repealed, but I guess I will just have to use the results and charts posted on the Wehe website.

What's new

Fixed a bug preventing Wehe to run on mobile data networks