VoIP Quality Assessment: Taking Account of the Edge-Device

Voice-over-IP networks (VoIP) have yet to be universally accepted as a replacement for public switched telephone network services. One of the barriers to this step is the ability to manage the network to ensure the user receives a suitable quality of service during a call. IP networks are nondeterministic, and the impact of network degradations, such as loss and jitter, on the quality perceived by the user is difficult to measure. This paper investigates the role played by the edge-device in the impact of network degradations on user-perceived quality. It shows that all edge-devices are not equal, and proposes calibration as a method of accounting for different devices when monitoring VoIP streams. Finally, it presents results that show the prediction accuracy that can be obtained by using such a method