Correlating user perception and measurable network properties: Experimenting with QoE

Abstract

User perception of a networking service is usually very different from the operators' understanding of service usability. Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics are supposed to describe the service from the end-users' point of view - although QoE is hard to measure for mass services. Collection and analysis of QoS and SLS (Service Level Specification) properties of networking services are daily tasks of the operators. These metrics, however often provide misleading description of user satisfaction. Our ultimate aim is to find methods and metrics determining QoE by passive measurements on an aggregated network link. In this paper we describe our experimental results on correlating the severity of a network bottleneck and the experienced service quality. During our measurements we have loaded the network with various kinds of service requests and made notes on the perceived quality. We have also captured packet level traffic, and derived metrics based on packet interarrival times, packet size information and packet loss information. This paper briefly presents some of our analysis results. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.