Robust and Extensible Measurement of Broadband Plans with BQT+

2026-02-18

AI Summary

Existing broadband measurement systems struggle to simultaneously achieve robustness, scalability, and low technical barriers, particularly when confronted with frequent interface changes and procedural heterogeneity across hundreds of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This work proposes the BQT+ framework, which, for the first time, models broadband querying as a declarative specification of states and actions. It formalizes the interaction state space using an abstract nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) and employs a runtime dynamic path selection mechanism to automatically adapt to evolving ISP interfaces. By replacing traditional monolithic crawling pipelines, BQT+ enables unified extensibility across more than 100 ISPs while offering a non-expert-friendly operational experience. The system has successfully supported long-term monitoring of 64 ISPs and has been deployed in baseline construction for the BEAD program and affordability assessments covering 124,000 addresses across four states.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web measurements
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Independent, street address-level broadband data is essential for evaluating Internet infrastructure investments, such as the $42B Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Evaluating these investments requires longitudinal visibility into broadband availability, quality, and affordability, including data on pre-disbursement baselines and changes in providers' advertised plans. While such data can be obtained through Internet Service Provider (ISP) web interfaces, these workloads impose three fundamental system requirements: robustness to frequent interface evolution, extensibility across hundreds of providers, and low technical overhead for non-expert users. Existing systems fail to meet these three essential requirements. We present BQT+, a broadband plan measurement framework that replaces monolithic workflows with declarative state/action specifications. BQT+ models querying intent as an interaction state space, formalized as an abstract nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA), and selects execution paths at runtime to accommodate alternative interaction flows and localized interface changes. We show that BQT+ sustains longitudinal monitoring of 64 ISPs, supporting querying for over 100 ISPs. We apply it to two policy studies: constructing a BEAD pre-disbursement baseline and benchmarking broadband affordability across over 124,000 addresses in four states.

Problem

• broadband measurement
• ISP interface evolution
• longitudinal monitoring
• address-level data
• policy evaluation

Innovation

• declarative state/action specification
• nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA)
• robustness to interface evolution
• extensible broadband measurement
• longitudinal monitoring