The increase in multimedia content on the Internet has created a renewed interest in quality assessment. There is however a main difference from the traditional quality assessment approaches, as now, the focus relies on the user perceived quality, opposed to the network centered approach classically proposed. In this paper we overview the most relevant challenges to perform Quality of Experience (QoE) assessment in IP networks and highlight the particular considerations necessary when compared to alternative mechanisms, already deployed, such as Quality of Service (QoS). To assist on the handling of such challenges we first discuss the different approaches to Quality of Experience assessment along with the most relevant QoE metrics, and then we discuss how they are used to provide objective results about user satisfaction.

Peer Reviewed