Patent ID: 7430179

Claim:
A near real time quality analyzer, comprising: a passive stream collector that passively samples packets from a stream of Internet Protocol (IP) packets that represent a communication session between a pair of end points carrying analog signals being transmitted over a transmission path in an IP network, and determines in near real time at least two metrics from the sampled packets for the communication session; wherein the at least two metrics comprise: at least one metric that measures a quantity of lost packets; and at least one metric that measures a characteristic of packet jitter; a stream quality analyzer that receives the at least two metrics and calculates a quality score in near real time using a quality formula that combines the at least two metrics; and wherein the quality formula takes the general form of: Q=K 1 +ln( K 2 + K 3 J )+ exp (K 4 P ) where Q is the quality score, the values of K 1 , K 2 , K 3 and K 4 are constants, J is jitter, and P is packet loss.