Patent ID: 7990887

Claim:
A method for testing a communication network, comprising: generating a flow of test packets, the flow comprising a series of bursts of the test packets separated by intervals having an interval duration, each burst comprising a sequence of the test packets and having a burst duration less than the interval duration, wherein generating the flow comprises generating a test packet having a packet size and data rate chosen according to a predetermined codec used in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP); transmitting the flow of test packets over a path through the network; measuring arrival characteristics of the test packets in the flow at a receiving end of the path, the arrival characteristics comprising at least one of a packet loss characteristic, a packet delay characteristic, and a packet jitter characteristic; and detecting a quality defect in the network based on the measured arrival characteristics; said detecting a quality defect by computing a statistical feature of said arrival characteristics of the test packets over said series of bursts while disregarding the arrival characteristics of an initial test packet in each burst; computing, for the predetermined codec, a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for each burst based on the arrival characteristics of the test packets thereof; determining the percentage of bursts in the series for which a corresponding MOS is above a predetermined threshold; and determining whether call quality over the communication network is inadequate based on a percentage of bursts in the series for which the corresponding MOS is lower than the predetermined threshold.