Method For Determining A Quality Of User Experience While Performing Activities in IP Networks

• US 20100269044A1
• Filed: 04/16/2010
• Published: 10/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/17/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Empirix Incorporated (Empirix Holdings I, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Empirix Incorporated (Empirix Holdings I, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hsing-Wang Wong, David, Ivanyi, Tibor, Eidelman, Sergey, Nath, Anuj, Turgeon, Anne-Marie
• Granted Patent: US 8,656,284 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/736
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5067 Customer-centric QoS measurements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/58 based on statistics of usage or network monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/8016 based on quality of service [QoS]

Abstract

An embodiment of the present invention provides a method for establishing Quality of Experience (QoE) measurements and metrics for different types of actual user activities over IP networks. These activities include, but are not limited to web browsing, sending and receiving email, file downloading and uploading, peer to peer (P2P) networking, VoIP, online gaming, and media streaming. The measurement of the QoE metrics is based on both objective and subjective metrics, including network characteristics, such as packet loss and latency, along with empirical observations of the user activities.

Claims

1. A method for establishing a quality of experience (QoE) score for a user activity from a plurality of user activities performed by a user over an IP network, comprising the steps of:

setting the QoE score for the user activity to an initial value;

measuring one or more network characteristics from a plurality of network characteristics and resulting in one or more network characteristics metrics, the one or more network characteristics associated with a traffic generated by the user activity;

raising one or more quality events from a plurality of quality events in response to a result from the one or more network characteristics metrics; and

updating the QoE score in response to the one or more quality events.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the user activity is selected from the group consisting of web browsing, sending email, receiving email, downloading a first file, uploading a second file, peer to peer file sharing, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), online gaming, media streaming, and secure session.

3. The method as recited in claim 2, wherein secure session is selected from the group consisting of a virtual private network session and a hypertext transfer protocol suite secure session.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more network characteristics are selected from the group consisting of a packet loss, a packet jitter, a packet latency, a corrupted packet, and a fulfill request time.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more network characteristics are counted in back to back occurrence.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more network characteristics are counted in occurrence per a fixed time period.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of accepting a subjective score for the user activity from the user.

8. The method as recited in claim 7, wherein the subjective score is a number.

9. The method as recited in claim 7, wherein the subjective score is the selection of a verbal response among a set of verbal responses to a statement.

10. The method as recited in claim 7, wherein the subjective score is accepted from the user at the end of the user activity.

11. The method as recited in claim 7, wherein the step of accepting a subjective score is performed only once over a period of time.

12. The method as recited in claim 11, further comprising the step of accepting a value for the period of time from the user.

13. The method as recited in claim 7, further comprising the step of comparing the subjective score with the QoE score.

14. The method as recited in claim 13, further comprising the step of adding one or more additional network characteristics from the plurality of network characteristics to the one or more network characteristics in response to a difference between the subjective score and the QoE score being greater than a threshold.

15. The method as recited in claim 14, wherein an outlier network characteristic is removed from the one or more network characteristics if a contribution from the outlier network characteristic to the QoE score is greater than an outlier threshold.

16. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein an importance level is associated with the user activity.

17. The method as recited in claim 16, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify the importance level.

18. The method as recited in claim 16, further comprising the step of allowing a second user to specify the importance level.

19. The method as recited in claim 18, wherein the second user is selected from the group consisting of a system administrator and an internet service provider.

20. The method as recited in claim 16, further comprising the step of adjusting the QoE score based on the importance level.

21. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of allowing the user to define a new user activity.

22. The method as recited in claim 21, wherein the new user activity includes one or more user activities from the plurality of user activities.

23. The method as recited in claim 21, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify an application associated with the new user activity.

24. The method as recited in claim 21, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify a port number associated with the new user activity.

25. The method as recited in claim 21, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify a regular expression associated with the new user activity.

26. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify an application associated with the user activity.

27. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify a port number associated with the user activity.

28. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify a regular expression associated with the user activity.

30. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of allowing the user to specify an expected experience level for the user activity.

31. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of allowing a new user to specify an expected experience level for the user activity.

32. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying on a display of a computer of the user the QoE score.

33. The method as recited in claim 32, further comprising the step of displaying a diagnosis associated with the QoE score.

34. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity based on a port number.

35. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity based on a list of active network connections.

36. The method as recited in claim 35, further comprising the step of parsing the list of active network connections using one or more regular expressions associated with the user activity.

37. The method as recited in claim 36, further comprising the step of allowing the user to customize the one or more regular expressions.

38. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity using shallow packet inspection.

39. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity using deep packet inspection.

40. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity using a packet sniffer.

41. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity using an application programmable interface of an application associated with the user activity.

42. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the step of measuring one or more network characteristics further includes the step of detecting the traffic generated by the user activity using a proxy.

43. The method as recited in claim 42, wherein the proxy resides on a web browser used by the user.

44. The method as recited in claim 42, wherein the proxy resides on a modem used by the user.

45. The method as recited in claim 42, wherein the proxy resides on a router used by the user.