Patent ID: 7929457

Claim:
A method comprising: measuring performance characteristics of multiple, individual network components that are used to provide a customer service to an end customer, the customer service including one or more service instances that each use a different end-to-end chain of the network components; generating trigger signals that include values representing the measured performance characteristics of the individual network components of an end-to-end chain; selecting a mapping model from among multiple mapping models, the selected mapping model including at least first through third correlation functions that each define one or more linkages between parameters of neighboring parameter levels, and one or more weighting factors; applying the first correlation function to the trigger signals to obtain a set of key quality parameters that represent a performance of the individual network component in the end-to-end chain of the network components; applying the second correlation function to the set of key quality parameters to obtain a set of service quality parameters that represent a measured performance of the end-to-end chain of the network components used by a service instance; applying the third correlation function to the set of service quality parameters to obtain a customer quality parameter which represents a service quality of the customer service as perceived by the end customer; and outputting an output signal that includes the customer quality parameter.