Leveraging Large Language Models to Contextualize Network Measurements

Abstract

With the worldwide growth of remote communication and telepresence, network measurements form a cornerstone of effective performance assessment and diagnostics for Internet users. Most often, users seek for overall connection performance measurement using publicly available tools (also known as `speed tests') that provide an overview of their connection's throughput and latency. However, extracting meaningful insights from these measurements remains a challenging task for a non-technical audience. Interpreting network measurement data often requires considerable domain expertise to account not only for subtle variations of the connection stability and metrics, but even for simpler concepts such as latency under load or packet loss influence towards connection performance. In the absence of proper expertise, common misconceptions can easily arise. To address these issues, researchers should recognize the importance of making network measurements not only more comprehensive but also more accessible for wider audience without deep technical knowledge. A promising direction to achieve this goal involves leveraging recent advancements in large language models (LLMs), which have demonstrated capabilities in conducting an analysis of complex data in other fields, such as laboratory test results interpretation, news summarization, and personal assistance. In this paper, we describe an ongoing effort to apply large language models and historical data to enhance the interpretation of network measurements in real-world environments. We aim to automate the translation of low-level metric data into accessible explanations, allowing non-experts to make more informed decisions regarding network performance and reliability.