Patent ID: 6961315

Claim:
A method for monitoring a packet transmission path in a network to determine conversational voice quality of Voice-over-Packet transmissions across said path, comprising the steps of: injecting multiple probe packets for transport across the transmission path; measuring packet delay and packet loss for said probe packets across said path; establishing an analytic value for voice quality impairment due to delay in accordance with measured packet delay; establishing an analytic value for voice quality impairment due to said network in accordance with packet loss; deriving a measure of overall conversational voice quality associated with the transmission path in accordance with the algebraic sum of the analytic values for voice quality impairment due to delay and voice quality impairment due to loss in said network; and wherein the analytic value for voice quality impairment due to delay (I d ) is obtained in accordance with the relationship: I d =b 1 d+b 2 ( d−b 3 ) H ( d−b 3 ) where b 1 =0.024/ms, b 2 =0.11/ms and b 3 =177.3 ms, d is the measured delay and H(x) is the Heavyside function.