Conference Paper

You Tube QoE Monitoring with YoMoApp: A Web-Based Data Interface for Researchers

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Chapter
The explosion of mobile broadband as an essential means of Internet connectivity has made the scalable evaluation and inference of quality of experience (QoE) for applications delivered over LTE networks critical. However, direct QoE measurement can be time and resource intensive. Further, the wireless nature of LTE networks necessitates that QoE be evaluated in multiple locations per base station as factors such as signal availability may have significant spatial variation. Based on our observations that quality of service (QoS) metrics are less time and resource-intensive to collect, we investigate how QoS can be used to infer QoE in LTE networks. Using an extensive, novel dataset representing a variety of network conditions, we design several state-of-the-art predictive models for scalable video QoE inference. We demonstrate that our models can accurately predict rebuffering events and resolution switching more than 80% of the time, despite the dataset exhibiting vastly different QoS and QoE profiles for the location types. We also illustrate that our classifiers have a high degree of generalizability across multiple videos from a vast array of genres. Finally, we highlight the importance of low-cost QoS measurements such as reference signal received power (RSRP) and throughput in QoE inference through an ablation study.
Technical Report
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Changing network conditions pose severe problems to video streaming in the Internet. HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) is a technology employed by numerous video services that relieves these issues by adapting the video to the current network conditions. It enables service providers to improve resource utilization and Quality of Experience (QoE) by incorporating information from different layers in order to deliver and adapt a video in its best possible quality. Thereby, it allows taking into account end user device capabilities, available video quality levels, current network conditions, and current server load. For end users, the major benefits of HAS compared to classical HTTP video streaming are reduced interruptions of the video playback and higher bandwidth utilization, which both generally result in a higher QoE. Adaptation is possible by changing the frame rate, resolution, or quantization of the video, which can be done with various adaptation strategies and related client- and server-side actions. The technical development of HAS, existing open standardized solutions, but also proprietary solutions are reviewed in this paper as fundamental to derive the QoE influence factors that emerge as a result of adaptation. The main contribution is a comprehensive survey of QoE related works from human computer interaction and networking domains, which are structured according to the QoE impact of video adaptation. To be more precise, subjective studies that cover QoE aspects of adaptation dimensions and strategies are revisited. As a result, QoE influence factors of HAS and corresponding QoE models are identified, but also open issues and conflicting results are discussed. Furthermore, technical influence factors, which are often ignored in the context of HAS, affect perceptual QoE influence factors and are consequently analyzed. This survey gives the reader an overview of the current state of the art and recent developments. At the same time, it targets networking res- archers who develop new solutions for HTTP video streaming or assess video streaming from a user centric point of view. Therefore, this paper is a major step toward truly improving HAS.
Conference Paper
The performance of YouTube in mobile networks is crucial to network operators, who try to find a trade-off between cost-efficient handling of the huge traffic amounts and high perceived end-user Quality of Experience (QoE). This paper introduces YoMoApp (YouTube Performance Monitoring Application), an Android application, which passively monitors key performance indicators (KPIs) of YouTube adaptive video streaming on end-user smartphones. The monitored KPIs (i.e., player state/events, buffer, and video quality level) can be used to analyze the QoE of mobile YouTube video sessions. YoMoApp is a valuable tool to assess the performance of mobile networks with respect to YouTube traffic, as well as to develop optimizations and QoE models for mobile HTTP adaptive streaming. We test YoMoApp through real subjective QoE tests showing that the tool is accurate to capture the experience of end-users watching YouTube on smartphones.
YoMoApp: a Tool for Analyzing QoE of YouTube HTTP Adaptive Streaming in Mobile Networks
  • F Wamser