Video quality monitoring

• US 10,681,574 B2
• Filed: 11/09/2018
• Issued: 06/09/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ineoquest Technologies Incorporated (Telestream Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Ineoquest Technologies Incorporated (Telestream Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Dion, Gino Louis, Newton, Stuart W., Harrison, Calvin W., Welch, James T.
• Primary Examiner(s): Zaidi, Iqbal
• Application Number:
  US16/185,366
• Publication Number:
  US 20190075477A1
• Time in Patent Office: 578 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23424 involving splicing one content stream with another content stream, e.g. for inserting or substituting an advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2387 Stream processing in response to a playback request from an end-user, e.g. for trick-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2402 Monitoring of the downstream path of the transmission network, e.g. bandwidth available traffic monitoring in data switching networks H04L43/00; monitoring data switching networks utilization H04L43/0876
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2404 Monitoring of server processing errors or hardware failure error or fault detection G06F11/07; monitoring in general G06F11/30
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4331 Caching operations, e.g. of an advertisement for later insertion during playback
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/43615 Interfacing a Home Network, e.g. for connecting the client to a plurality of peripherals home Audio Video Interoperability [HAVI] data switching networks H04L12/2805
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44209 Monitoring of downstream path of the transmission network originating from a server, e.g. bandwidth variations of a wireless network arrangements for maintenance or administration in data switching networks involving bandwidth and capacity management H04L41/0896
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44226 on social networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/44227 Monitoring of local network, e.g. connection or bandwidth variations; Detecting new devices in the local network configuring of peripheral devices in general G06F9/4411; monitoring connectivity in data switched networks H04L43/0811
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4425 Monitoring of client processing errors or hardware failure
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/47202 for requesting content on demand, e.g. video on demand
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6131 involving transmission via a mobile phone network wireless downlink channel access H04W74/006
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6373 for rate control , e.g. request to the server to modify its transmission rate flow control in packet networks H04L47/10
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64322 IP
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6473 Monitoring network processes errors for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/64738 Monitoring network characteristics, e.g. bandwidth, congestion level data switched network analysis H04L41/14; monitoring functioning in data switched networks H04L43/0817; flow control in packet networks H04L47/10
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17318 Direct or substantially direct transmission and handling of requests
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

Methods for monitoring quality metrics of a video session transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility are disclosed. A method for monitoring quality of a video system that uses traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility may include tapping, by a video quality probe, into a mobile network traffic stream transmitted over the mobile video delivery network facility, filtering, by the video quality probe, the tapped mobile network traffic stream to identify an individual video session; and determining, by the video quality probe, a video quality parameter corresponding to the identified individual video session.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring video quality transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, comprising:

tapping, by a video quality probe, into a mobile network traffic stream transmitted over the mobile video delivery network facility, wherein the mobile network traffic stream includes General Packet Radio System Tunneling Protocol (GTP) header information;

filtering, by the video quality probe, the tapped mobile network traffic stream to identify an individual video session, wherein the identified individual video session is associated with a unique user and at least one of a unique device and a unique mobile account;

determining, by the video quality probe, a video quality parameter corresponding to the identified individual video session, wherein the video quality parameter is at least one of packet jitter growth, packet loss, instantaneous flow rate balance (IFRB), delay between packets, a jitter statistic, a total time required to receive all packets needed to fully assemble a segment, a statistic of errors in key frames, a measure of HTTP transport quality, and a measure of DNS resolution performance;

aggregating context information for the identified individual video session, wherein the context information includes at least one of a cell tower, a smart node, a serving gateway node, a user, a subscriber level, a device type, an application, and a content provider; and

transmitting, by the video quality probe, the aggregated context information and the determined video quality parameter to a video quality server.

2. A method for monitoring video quality transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, comprising:

tapping, by a corresponding video quality probe, into a mobile video delivery network facility traffic stream in at least two locations, wherein at least one of the locations is on a mobile viewing device;

filtering, by the corresponding video quality probe, the tapped mobile video delivery network facility traffic stream to identify at least one individual common video session at each of the at least two locations;

determining, by the corresponding video quality probe, a video quality parameter associated with each of the at least two locations for the at least one individual common video session, wherein the video quality parameters are each at least one of packet jitter growth, packet loss, instantaneous flow rate balance (IFRB), delay between packets, a jitter statistic, a total time required to receive all packets needed to fully assemble a segment, a statistic of errors in key frames, a measure of HTTP transport quality, and a measure of DNS resolution performance;

aggregating context information for the at least one individual common video session, wherein the context information includes at least one of a cell tower, a smart node, a serving gateway node, a user, a subscriber level, a device type, an application, and a content provider; and

transmitting, by the video quality probes, the aggregated context information and the video quality parameters to a video quality server.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein at least one of the locations is in an LTE mobile core between an S5/S8 interface and an S11 interface or in the LTE mobile core between an S1 interface and the S5/S8 interface.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein at least one of the locations is outside of the LTE mobile core.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the video quality probe in the LTE mobile core is a virtual probe.

6. A method for monitoring video quality transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, comprising:

tapping into a mobile video delivery network traffic stream in two locations, wherein at least one of the locations is on a mobile viewing device and wherein a passive monitor is used at one of the two locations and an active monitor is used at the other of the two locations;

filtering the tapped mobile video delivery network traffic stream to identify an individual common video session at each location;

determining a corresponding video quality parameter associated with each location for the individual common video session, wherein each video quality parameter is at least one of packet jitter growth, packet loss, instantaneous flow rate balance (IFRB), delay between packets, a jitter statistic, a total time required to receive all packets needed to fully assemble a segment, a statistic of errors in key frames, a measure of HTTP transport quality, and a measure of DNS resolution performance;

aggregating context information for the individual video session, wherein the context information includes at least one of a cell tower, a smart node, a serving gateway node, a user, a subscriber level, a device type, an application, and a content provider; and

transmitting the aggregated context information and the video quality parameters to a video quality server.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein one of the locations includes a virtual probe in an LTE mobile core.

8. A method for monitoring video quality transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, comprising:

tapping, by a corresponding video quality probe, into a mobile video delivery network traffic stream in at least two locations, wherein at least one of the locations is on a mobile viewing device using an SDK;

filtering, by the corresponding video quality probe, the tapped mobile video delivery network traffic stream to identify at least one individual common video session at each of the at least two locations;

determining, by the corresponding video quality probe, a video quality parameter associated with each of the at least two locations for the at least one individual common video session, wherein the video quality parameters are each at least one of packet jitter growth, packet loss, instantaneous flow rate balance (IFRB), delay between packets, a jitter statistic, a total time required to receive all packets needed to fully assemble a segment, a statistic of errors in key frames, a measure of HTTP transport quality, and a measure of DNS resolution performance;

aggregating context information for the at least one individual common video session, wherein the context information includes at least one of a cell tower, a smart node, a serving gateway node, a user, a subscriber level, a device type, an application, and a content provider; and

transmitting, by the video quality probe, at least one location, the aggregated context information, and a video quality parameter to a video quality server.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the video quality server is a physical server or a virtual server.

10. A method for monitoring video quality transmitted over a mobile video delivery network, comprising:

tapping, by a video quality probe, into a mobile video delivery network traffic stream in at least two locations, wherein at least one of the locations is on a mobile viewing device;

filtering, by a corresponding video quality probe, the tapped mobile video delivery network traffic stream to identify at least one individual common video session at each of the at least two locations;

determining, by the corresponding video quality probe, a video quality parameter associated with each of the at least two locations for the at least one individual common video session, wherein the video quality parameters are each at least one of packet jitter growth, media delivery quality, packet loss, instantaneous flow rate balance (IFRB), delay between packets, a jitter statistic, a total time required to receive all packets needed to fully assemble a segment, a statistic of errors in key frames, a measure of HTTP transport quality and a measure of DNS resolution performance;

aggregating user information parameters for the at least one individual common video session, wherein the user information parameters include location of user, subscriber level, device type, application, user interactions with application, or user interactions with device and content provider; and

transmitting, by the corresponding video quality probes, at least one video quality parameter and one user information parameter to a video quality server.

11. A method for monitoring quality of a video session that uses video traffic transmitted over a mobile video delivery network facility, comprising:

monitoring a first mobile video delivery network facility that handles at least a portion of the video traffic for the video session for information about the video traffic, wherein the first mobile video delivery network facility is located in an LTE mobile core;

monitoring a second mobile video delivery network facility that handles at least a portion of the video traffic for the video session for information about the video traffic, wherein the second mobile video delivery network facility is located external to an LTE mobile core, and wherein the second mobile video delivery network facility includes a viewing device, wherein the viewing device is at least one of a mobile phone, a laptop computer, a tablet, and a television;

filtering the information collected from the two mobile video delivery network facilities about the video traffic to identify a common video session; and

determining a video quality parameter relating to the quality of the common video session based on the information collected from the two mobile video delivery network facilities about the video traffic.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the LTE mobile core consists of a packet data network gateway, a serving node gateway, a base station, and at least one of a control plane and a user/data plane, and wherein a location of the LTE mobile core is at least one of an S5/S8 interface, an S11 interface, and an S1 interface.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the second mobile video delivery network facility includes a stream ingestion location, a cache distribution network, an edge distribution location, or Adaptive Bit Rate Sources (ABR).

14. A method for monitoring quality of a video session that uses traffic transmitted over a core mobile video delivery network facility, comprising:

tapping into at least one device within the core mobile video delivery network facility, wherein the at least one device is a small cell hardware device, using a virtual probe that is disposed within the at least one device, wherein the probe performs at least one of active video stream monitoring and passive video stream monitoring, and wherein the virtual probe reports, with respect to an individual video stream to the at least one device, at least one of information about operation of the device and performance of the core mobile video delivery network facility to a host system that collects information about the performance of the core mobile video delivery network facility, wherein reporting the performance of the delivery network includes reporting on at least one of quality of the video stream through the device and quality of the network traffic through the device.