By Peter Nowak, CBCNews.ca.

Eight months ago, Google launched a nifty feature called M-Labs (a.k.a. Measurement Labs). The tool is designed to give internet users some idea of how their connections are being handled by service providers. M-Labs lets you see how your ISP is managing your connection, what kind of bandwidth it's giving you and whether or not you're being throttled.

The search company today announced that Greece's telecommunications regulator is endorsing M-Labs by donating some servers to the project. The Hellenic Telecommunications & Post Commission (known as the EETT), along with the academic Greek Research and Technology Network, are setting up an M-Labs node in Athens and will contribute to improving the system's usability. It's a bit of trail-blazing position, considering that regulators elsewhere – Canada included – have thus far let ISPs manage their networks however they like.

The more interesting part of Google's announcement is the promise that the data being collected by M-Labs will in the next few months be made public. We should then have a comparative picture of how ISPs around the world are managing and shaping internet traffic, and where it's happening. How will Canada fare?