Evaluation of Conversational Voice Communication Quality of the Skype, Google-Talk, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger Voip Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate die conversational voice communication quality (CVCQ) of VoIP systems, both from the user and the system perspectives. We first identify the metrics for CVCQ, which include listening-only speech quality (LOSQ). conversational interactivity (CI), and conversational efficiency (CE). These depend on the mouth-to-ear delays (MEDs) between the two clients. Based on packet traces collected in the PlanetLab and on the dynamics of human interactive speech, we study four popular VoIP client systems: Skype (v2.5), Google-Talk (Beta), Windows Live Messenger (v8.0). and Yahoo Messenger with Voice (v8.0). under various network and conversational conditions.