QoEScope: Adaptive IP service management for heterogeneous enterprise networks

Abstract

In the recent years, a progressively growing number of computing and communication services have undertaken the migration from their conventional media to the new unified platform, IP networks. As a consequence, business success of service providers becomes largely determined by the effectiveness of their service management schemes, which require rapid identification of problems and resolution of network-related anomalies. However, this is a non-trivial task in heterogeneous enterprise networks due to service providers' invisibility of the health and performance of the underlying carrier network. In addition, the gap between quality of service (QoS) measurements reflecting network performance and quality of experience (QoE) metrics indicating user-perceived service quality further makes effective service management more challenging. In this paper, we present a unified service management system called QoEScope, which combines scalable end-to-end probing, accurate topology inference in the presence of implicit routers, adaptive bridging between QoS measurement and QoE metrics, and intelligent root cause analysis. Extensive testbed emulations and Internet experiments demonstrate that QoEScope is a highly practical and effective IP service management solution for heterogeneous enterprise networks.