Patent ID: 7274670

Claim:
A method of evaluating performance of a network that supports packetized communications, the method comprising: initiating execution of a network test protocol associated with the packetized communications; obtaining network performance data based on the initiated network test protocol; generating an overall network quality rating based on the obtained performance data; and calculating at least one network impairment indicator based on the overall network quality rating, wherein the packetized communications comprise packetized voice communications and wherein initiating execution of the network test protocol comprises: defining a call script including configuring at least one of a codec, a jitter buffer, a quality of service (QoS), a speech packet size, a number of concurrent calls, a delay between packets, a fixed delay or silence suppression; selecting at least one of connections or endpoints for the network test protocol; scheduling at least one of a total duration of the network test protocol, a duration of each individual call or an interval between calls; verifying that the network test protocol will operate, wherein verifying includes running the network test protocol for a period less than the total duration of the network test protocol; and initiating the network test protocol if the test is verified.