Patent ID: 6912216

Claim:
A method for estimating end-to-end quality of service parameters for an Internet Protocol (“IP”) communications network, wherein the end-to-end quality of service parameters are selected from end-to-end packet loss, end-to-end packet delay and end-to-end packet delay jitter, and wherein the IP communications network includes routers connected by links and gateways to a Public Switched Telephone Network (“PSTN”), the method using estimates of offered traffic for each service from each source carried to each gateway of the IP communications network, comprising the steps of: estimating, from the offered traffic to each gateway, blocked traffic and carried traffic at each gateway; estimating a load carried for each network link using a network routing algorithm and based on the carried traffic; calculating a loss probability for each network link using the load carried for the network link and a varying number of active sources; and estimating an end-to-end packet loss probability by using the loss probabilities of each network link.