Quality of Service Versus Quality of Experience

Abstract

It is often the case that in the current literature, the term “QoE” is used in contexts where “QoS” would be more appropriate. This is likely due to several reasons, one of which being the current popularity of all things related with QoE, but more fundamentally it is due to the boundaries between QoS and QoE not being clearly defined—and indeed, sometimes hard to define clearly. QoE is an intrinsically multi-disciplinary field, and practitioners from different backgrounds see it, quite naturally, from different perspectives colored by their own expertise. For networking people, in particular, QoE is sometimes seen as a simple extension, or even a re-branding, of the well-established concept of QoS. In this chapter we will delve into the differences and commonalities between the two, with the goal of easing and encouraging their proper use.