This is a hard problem. Internet tomography aside (an even harder problem), route-servers and looking glasses everywhere expressly forbid automation, and any network administrator, virtually anywhere, can break your reachability testing. Add to this the myriad complications of BGP selectivity (Why do people insist that "net neutrality" is in danger when it never existed as stated?), and network operator participation becomes almost unavoidable.

While I understand that tools such as http://www.internettrafficreport.com and http://internetpulse.keynote.com are not enough, it isn't at all clear to me how any single actor could provide better monitoring. I admit this sounds pessimistic, but I've thought deeply about this and similar topics for many years, and I'm all too familiar with the obstacles to (and poor architecture underlying) Internet polling.

However, I do see a clear need for aggregated monitoring data--many sources, re-published succinctly in one easy-to-find place--and I would certainly donate to such a cause.