VoIP Service Quality : Measuring and Evaluating Packet-Switched Voice [Hardcover]

William Hardy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0071410767 | ISBN-13: 978-0071410762 | Edition: 1

VoIP is the next big advance in telecommunications, but it is exceptionally hard to implement. The very things that make our telephones so comfortable to use - instant connections, strong clear signals, and no downtime - are the things data networks sacrificed for speed and flexibility. As we begin to replace traditional phone service with voice over data networks, quality assurance has to be re-invented. Telecom managers didn't design VoIP, but they're the ones responsible for quality and they have to come up to speed fast on the measurements, tools, and utilities in the IP environment that can help to get the job done.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

VoIP SAVINGS AND FLEXIBILITY! TELEPHONE-LINE QUALITY?

Despite the features that make Voice over IP so attractive from the standpoint of cost and flexibility of telephone services, businesses will only adopt it once they’ve determined whether, and under what circumstances, the quality of VoIP will be satisfactory to users. In these pages you’ll find everything you need to know to answer those questions, both now and in the future as other packet-switched voice services emerge.

This in-the-trenches guide supplies you with all the tools you need for VoIP service quality analysis, including explicit directions for:
* designing subjective tests and interpreting results
* selecting, extending, and applying speech distortion and multiple effects models
* examining call set-up times for IP telephony
* determining requirements for multimedia exchanges.

Without hokum, hype, or obscure tech talk, Hardy delivers solid information on means of measuring, assessing, and improving VoIP quality. He gives you expert information and hands-on specifics, showing you:
* The factors that can create a negative caller experience and how packet switching affects them
* What to look for in assessing VoIP quality
* How to elicit and interpret user evaluations of voice quality
* How to estimate likely user perception of voice quality by objective test and analysis
* When and how to apply alternative quality measurement techniques to overcome quality shortfalls.

Get wireline quality from VoIP service with clear guidance from a world-class expert in analysis of service quality.

About the Author

Dr. William C. ("Chris") Hardy is the erstwhile principal analyst for quality measurement and analyses at WorldCom. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics and nearly 35 years' experience in operations analysis of communications and computer-based decision support systems gained in the course of: a 13-year career in analyses of military communications systems begun when he joined the Center for Naval Analyses in 1967; 2 1/2 years at Satellite Business Systems as Assistant Director for Systems Measurements; and more than 13 years at MCI/WorldCom, where his principal role was to serve as corporate "fair witness" for service quality, producing, where necessary, operationally meaningful, scientifically defensible analyses of the quality of WorldCom services and their relative position in the highly competitive telecommunciations marketplace. He holds 12 patents for telecommunications test technology and has 9 other active patent applications for innovations in test and analysis of commercial telecommunications services.

Dr. Hardy has authored a 1975 treatise for the U.S. Navy entitled "Operational Test and Evaluation for Communications Systems"; and QoS: Measurement and Evaluation of Telecommunications Service Quality, released in June 2001 by John Wiley and Sons. His column "Telecom Tips and Quality Quandaries" appearred regularly in QSDG Magazine, the official magazine of the Quality of Service Development Group of the ITU, while it was published, and he continues the discourse in the electronic version of the magazine. His other publications include three articles in academic journals, including two in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a paper in GLOBECOM '85, entitled "Subjective Voice Quality Evaluation in a Satellite Communications Environment."

He is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Science.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 317 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional; 1 edition (January 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071410767
• ISBN-13: 978-0071410762
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,529,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More touchy-feely than a bowl of peeled grapes, July 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: VoIP Service Quality : Measuring and Evaluating Packet-Switched Voice (Hardcover)

I bought this book because I was looking for an objective means to evaluate the quality of voice, and moreover, i was thinking that the topics in this book could be transplanted to a new application, e.g. how to evaluate the TCP transport quality in an underlying network, which is the subject of my new job.

As a reference, this book stinks. The author will not define the "voice envelope" where if you stay within the envelope users will have a hard time perceiving a loss in quality. For example, this book is touted as useful to VoIP Network Architects, but the book gives absolutely no guidance as to what is an acceptable (or unacceptable) level of delay in a VoIP phone system.

Instead, the author wastes 309 pages and about .01% of a perfectly good tree, to say, basically, "nobody can evaluate voice quality without running a side-by-side experiment between two systems." Its a wonder that someone can publish 309 pages of this drivil with one conclusion for his entire work. Oh, I forgot, the author fills up the book with 67 pages that are wasted in his bragging about all his patents, when he filed them, and what each and every last patent was about. If that isn't vanity publishing, I don't know what is.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understand what really matters for VoIP quality, March 15, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: VoIP Service Quality : Measuring and Evaluating Packet-Switched Voice (Hardcover)

I found this book to be enormously useful in understanding the determinants of voice quality in live, packet-based networks - not just what matters in engineering laboratories. Its value goes beyond, that, though, because it helped me understand what the people who run telecom companies and their customers should be looking for in the transition from today's voice networks to those carrying voice over IP. Anyone who is interested in these topics should read this book.

As more and more voice traffic is transmitted over packet-switched networks, the challenges to producing high-quality voice services at a low cost are increasing, thanks to the increasing complexity of the networks involved. There are corresponding pay-offs, however, for the equipment vendors and service providers that do learn how to meet these challenges. Not only should they be able to provide the equivalent of voice network's service for lower costs, they should also be able to offer new services that combine voice and data in ways that attract new customers -- and boost revenues. Conversely, as long as these challenges go unmet, or in many cases, unrecognized, they will slow the rate at which the promises of the new technology can be realized. Working as I do in a company striving to break through these barriers to success, it is heartening to find a book like this one that helps show the way.

VoIP Service Quality comprises three principal sections. The first lays out foundations for what follows. It starts by discussing the principal determinants of connection quality, especially in voice packet-switched networks. It next lays out how customer expectations for voice quality differ among the different services that can be offered with such networks, and closes with a description of the quality impairments that can be created or exacerbated by packet switching. The second section concerns the measurement and evaluation of voice quality. It offers value not only to those who are interested in the quality of packet-switched voice, but also those who are concerned with it in today's public switched telephone network. It shows how statistically rigorous, operationally useful quality testing can be set up in a network with minimal investment. It goes on to discuss a variety of automated test approaches, and lays out the benefits and defects of each. The third section outlines other quality concerns and points the way for measurement of voice quality in future, yet-to-be-defined services that combine voice and data. Those who are interested by this section would do well to read the author's previous book, the somewhat misleadingly entitled *QoS Measurement and Evaluation of Telecommunications Quality of Service*.

At the end of this voyage, the reader will have the complete conceptual structure needed to set up a voice service quality organization. Books like this one that lay out an arcane field in clear English are rare, especially since a good measure of humor is thrown in to ease the way. I recommend VoIP Service Quality highly.