From network-level measurements to expected quality of experience: The Skype use case

Abstract

Modern Internet applications rely on rich multimedia contents making the quality of experience (QoE) of end users sensitive to network conditions. Several models were developed in the literature to express QoE as a function of measurements carried out on the traffic of the applications themselves. In this paper, we propose a new methodology based on machine learning able to link expected QoE to network and device level measurements outside the applications' traffic. This direct linking to network and device level measurements is important for the prediction of QoE. We prove the feasibility of the approach in the context of Skype. In particular, we derive and validate a model to predict the Skype QoE as a function of easily measurable network performance metrics. One can see our methodology as a new way of performing measurements in the Internet, where instead of expressing the expected performance in terms of network and device level measurements that only specialists can understand, we express performance in clear terms related to expected quality of experience for different applications.