Patent ID: 8165109

Claim:
A method for managing a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network, the method comprising: identifying a teleagent deployed in a network for receiving calls from callers, the teleagent being identified by identification of a computer associated with a calling device used by the teleagent at a remote location that is different from a central location of the network; identifying a router in the network that is geographically located closest to the teleagent calling device from among a plurality of routers in the network; determining whether the teleagent is receiving an active voice call by observing, using a service assurance agent probe in the router located closest to the teleagent calling device that is routing traffic for the teleagent calling device, that two real-time protocol (RTP) streams are existing at the teleagent calling device, the two RTP streams including a first RTP stream used by a supervisor for monitoring the active voice call and a second RTP stream carrying the active voice call; based on the determination that the teleagent is receiving the active voice call capturing, using the service assurance agent probe, statistics related to the active voice call and storing the captured statistics in a historical database, the statistics being associated with one or more performance measures of a network connection to the teleagent calling device, the performance measures being selected from a group including information for latency, jitter and dropped packets; receiving, at a device for a network administrator at the central location, an alert message from the teleagent calling device that indicates that the teleagent calling device is experiencing poor quality of the active voice call, the alert message being activated from the teleagent calling device while the active voice call is in progress by information from an alert button on the teleagent calling device; correlating, using information from the device of the network administrator, the poor quality of the active voice call experienced by the teleagent calling device with the performance measures of the active voice call based on the captured statistics and the alert message; and removing, using information from the device of the network administrator and in response to the correlation, the teleagent calling device from a set of calling devices associated with a pool of available teleagents for subsequent voice calls on the network, such that the teleagent calling device remains removed from the pool until quality of voice calls at the teleagent calling device is improved by a predetermined threshold amount due to a recalibration, using the device of the network administrator, of threshold values associated with the one or more performance measures, the improvement being verified by generating a synthetic RTP stream, the synthetic RTP stream being is configured to simulate the voice call to the teleagent calling device for capturing the statistics related to the performance measures.