Incremental QoS Updates
The Interim Quality of Service (QoS) Update setting supported on the Acme Packet 4600 and the Acme Packet 6300 provides a more granular view of voice quality for troubleshooting by providing updates in 10 second increments. Without the Interim QoS Update setting selected, the Oracle® Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) probe provides an average Mean Opinion Score (MOS) only at the end of the call. A troubleshooter cannot see what occurred in other parts of the call. For example, suppose your employee or agent complains of poor voice quality that occurred in the middle of the call, but the average MOS score at the end of the call is 4.40. The troubleshooter might determine that the quality is acceptable, without knowing that the score in the middle of the call is 2.50. The Interim QoS Update setting provides MOS scores every 10 seconds, and with more granular data to help troubleshooting efforts.
Standalone Oracle Communications Operations Monitor (OCOM) probes, such as those that run OCOM software on Linux COTS servers, provide MOS scores in 10 second time chunks. With the Interim QoS Update setting selected, the data presented in OCOM looks similar whether coming from an E-SBC probe, OCOM probe, or both. To configure the devices to sample voice quality information in 10 second increments, select Interim QoS update in system-config.
The E-SBC provides the following data, per ten second interval.
- start + end time of the stream
- IP 5-tuple information to correlate to SIP sessions
- correlation information if available
- SSRC of the RTP stream (to be checked)
- Codec type
- Codec change information (if codecs changed)
The E-SBC provides the following data, per ten second chunk.
- jitter
- min/avg/max
- histogram (optional), e.g. # of packets with jitter <5ms, <10ms, <20ms, ... >100ms.
- packet loss
- # of packets received
- # of packets lost
- discarded packets (optional, received 50+ms too late)
- R-factor (optional)
- MOS value (optional)
- Per RTP stream.
- In 10 second increments, where the increment starts on a full minute based on the NTP clock (not the start time of the stream).
- Intervals not covering the full 10 seconds do not return a MOS value.
Licensing
Native EOM probes include the Interim QoS Update function. Using the feature requires a Media Quality Extension (MQE) license. The base Enterprise license includes the function. Service Provider customers must purchase the MQE license in addition to the base Service Provider OCOM license.
