VoIP diagnosis

• US 8,665,732 B2
• Filed: 07/25/2007
• Issued: 03/04/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: VOIPFUTURE GmbH (Jan Bastian Asset Management GmbH)
• Original Assignee: VOIPFUTURE GmbH (Jan Bastian Asset Management GmbH)
• Inventors: Zaencker, Olaf Carl
• Primary Examiner(s): Rinehart, Mark
• Assistant Examiner(s): YEUNG, MANG HANG
• Application Number:
  US11/828,332
• Publication Number:
  US 20090028061A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,414 Days
• Field of Search: 370231-252
• US Class Current: 370/244
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0829 Packet loss
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/087 Jitter
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/106 using time related information in packets, e.g. by adding timestamps
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/2236 Quality of speech transmission monitoring

Abstract

A VoIP-aware device generates data structures that include diagnostics data. The diagnostics data of each data structure identifies at least one of sender and network problems that degrade VoIP voice quality.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

using a single VoIP-aware device to generate VoIP diagnostics data from receipt times of consecutive received real VoIP packets without using corresponding transmit times, the diagnostics data identifying sender problems that cause degradation in VoIP voice quality; and

create and transmit a diagnostics data structure including the diagnostics data;

wherein generating the VoIP diagnostics data includes;

computing receive Interarrival times of the VoIP traffic in real time, each of the receive Interarrival times is computed as a difference between receipt times of two consecutive VoIP packets of one direction of a VoIP call;

aggregating the receive Interarrival times, including generating histograms of frequency of occurrence of the receive Interarrival times during a VoIP call; and

performing pattern recognition on the aggregated receive Interarrival times to identify the sender problems.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the diagnostics data structure further includes data identifying the VoIP-aware devices that have sent and received the VoIP traffic.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein granularity of the Interarrival times is reduced to reduce histogram size.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the VoIP diagnostics data further includes performing the pattern recognition on the histograms to identify sender implementation problems, sender configuration problems, network configuration problems, and network utilization problems.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the VoIP diagnostics data further includes comparing at least some of the analysis data to a threshold.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the sender problems include sender implementation problems and sender configuration problems.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the diagnostics data also identifies network problems.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the diagnostics data identifies and distinguishes between sender and network problems.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the aggregated and diagnostics data are generated continuously, and wherein the method further comprises generating additional data structures periodically, each data structure including a layer of the aggregated data and a higher layer of diagnostics data.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein each data structure contains aggregated and diagnostics data over an interval of received traffic.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the data structures are transmitted to at least one of a VoIP-aware device and a management system.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising using the data structures for adaptive behavior.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising using the data structures for VoIP network diagnosis.

14. A VoIP-aware device comprising:

a processor for generating VoIP diagnostics data from receipt times of consecutive received real VoIP packets without using corresponding transmit times, and generating data structures that include the diagnostics data, the diagnostics data identifying sender problems that degrade VoIP voice quality;

wherein generating the VoIP diagnostic data includes generating histograms of frequency of occurrence of receive Interarrival times during a VoIP call; and

performing a pattern recognition on the histograms to identify the sender problems.

15. The device of claim 14, wherein the sender problems include sender implementation problems and sender configuration problems.

16. The device of claim 14, wherein the diagnostics data is generated in real time from Interarrival times of VoIP traffic, each Interarrival time computed as the difference between receipt times of consecutive VoIP packets.

17. The device of claim 16, wherein each data structure contains diagnostics data over an interval of received packets.

18. The device of claim 14, wherein the data structures also include the histograms.

19. The device of claim 18, wherein the data structures also include other histograms of time-varying parameters of the VoIP traffic.

20. The device of claim 14, wherein the diagnostics data is generated continuously.

21. The device of claim 14, wherein the processing entity transmits the data structures to at least one of a VoIP-aware device and a management system.

22. The device of claim 21, wherein the data structures are transmitted only when the diagnostics data therein indicates bad voice quality.

23. The device of claim 14, wherein the processing entity uses the data structures for adaptive behavior.

24. The device of claim 14, wherein the processing entity uses the data structures for VoIP network diagnosis.

25. A VoIP-aware device comprising:

means for generating VoIP diagnostics data from real VoIP traffic during a VoIP call; and

means for creating data structures during the VoIP call, the data structures including the diagnostics data;

wherein the diagnostics data is generated in real time by aggregating receive Interarrival times to create histograms of frequency of occurrence of the receive Interarrival times during the VoIP call and performing pattern recognition on the histograms to identify any sender implementation or configuration problems during the VoIP call, where each of the receive Interarrival times is computed as a difference between receipt times of consecutive VoIP packets received by the VoIP-aware device.

26. The device of claim 25, wherein each data structure contains analysis and diagnostics data over an interval of received packets.