As part of Google's ongoing fight /for/ net-neutrality in the U.S., they've sponsored some very interesting research, piggybacking on the old "Web100" project (whose goal was to see 100Mbit/sec end-to-end across the entire Internet).

Check it out at: http://www.measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools

(According to these tests, Shaw is not blocking or shaping BitTorrent traffic for me - a bit of a surprise!)