Video Stream Monitoring and Network-centric QoE Prediction through User-behavioral Studies and Automated Learning

Sammanfattning: Quality of Experience (QoE) is the degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service [1]. To ensure a proper level of QoE for end users, networks and service providers have to continuously monitor their systems in terms of technical parameters, which can then be used to estimate QoE. Especially for video streaming services, which consume a large amount of traffic, network problems such as bandwidth fluctuations quickly develop into annoying artefacts visible to the users, which may lead to abandonment of services. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are therefore continuously monitoring video network streams in order to provide the better QoE. In this regard to conduct the user behavioral studies, the ISPs spend a large amount of money and energy every time. To avoid this, we are using existing user behavioral studies and simulating the user behavior in an automated set-up and try to measure the impact of network conditions. In our current studies based on the user-behavioral model used [5], we can conclude that low upload speeds don’t affect on simulated user behavior unless they are in high download speed networks. Simulated users with the mid-range download and upload bandwidth tend to face more stalling and quality switches compared to both low and high-bandwidth users. Key quality indicators(KQIs) of video QoE also depends on the number of videos we measure in a single session. Reloading of player helps to reduce stalling for mid and high bandwidths. Reloading worsens the situation in low bandwidth scenarios.