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Network reliability and QoS measurements. Henning Schulzrinne Columbia University Samsung, Seoul March 2004. Overview. The IRT Lab at Columbia University Application: Internet multimedia Quality of service = scheduling and admission control thousands of papers… network signaling
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Network reliability and QoS measurements Henning Schulzrinne Columbia University Samsung, Seoul March 2004
Overview • The IRT Lab at Columbia University • Application: Internet multimedia • Quality of service = • scheduling and admission control thousands of papers… • network signaling • end-system performance embedded end systems + PCs • QoS network application reliability
Laboratory overview • 11 PhDs • 3 at IBM, Lucent, Telcordia • 5 MS • Visitors (Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Nokia, U. Coimbra, U. Oulu, …) • China, Finland, Greece, India, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, US, Taiwan
IRT topics • Internet multimedia protocols and systems • Internet telephony and radio (SIP, RTSP, RTP) • Content distribution networks • Internet-scale event distribution • Service creation • Ubiquitous, context-aware computing and communications • Protocols and services for wireless ad-hoc networks • Service discovery • Quality of service • Pricing for adaptive services • Scalable resource reservation protocols (CASP, BGRP, YESSIR) • End-system evaluation • Network measurements • Service reliability
Internet multimedia • Internet telephony = replacing the existing circuit-switched system with Internet-based systems • Signaling and services • Quality of service philosophies: • end systems adapt and compensate • end systems use FEC, LBR, PLC • jitter playout delay compensation • network offers guarantees difficult architecturally, business, not necessarily technically • we pursue both
Assessment of VoIP Service Availability Wenyu Jiang Henning Schulzrinne IRT Lab, Dept. of Computer Science Columbia University
Overview (on-going work, preliminary results, still looking for measurement sites, …) • Service availability • Measurement setup • Measurement results • call success probability • overall network loss • network outages • outage induced call abortion probability
Service availability • Users do not care about QoS • at least not about packet loss, jitter, delay • FEC and PLC can deal with losses up to 5-8% • rather, it’s service availability how likely is it that I can place a call and not get interrupted? • availability = MTBF / (MTBF + MTTR) • MTBF = mean time between failures • MTTR = mean time to repair • availability = successful calls / first call attempts • equipment availability: 99.999% (“5 nines”) 5 minutes/year • AT&T: 99.98% availability (1997) • IP frame relay SLA: 99.9% • UK mobile phone survey: 97.1-98.8%
Availability – PSTN metrics • PSTN metrics (Worldbank study): • fault rate • “should be less than 0.2 per main line” • fault clearance (~ MTTR) • “next business day” • call completion rate • during network busy hour • “varies from about 60% - 75%” • dial tone delay
Example PSTN statistics Source: Worldbank
Measurement setup • Active measurements • call duration 3 or 7 minutes • UDP packets: • 36 bytes alternating with 72 bytes (FEC) • 40 ms spacing • September 10 to December 6, 2002 • 13,500 call hours
Call success probability • 62,027 calls succeeded, 292 failed 99.53% availability • roughly constant across I2, I2+, commercial ISPs
Overall network loss • PSTN: once connected, call usually of good quality • exception: mobile phones • compute periods of time below loss threshold • 5% causes degradation for many codecs • others acceptable till 20%
Network Outages • sustained packet losses • arbitrarily defined at 8 packets • far beyond any recoverable loss (FEC, interpolation) • 23% outages • make up significant part of 0.25% unavailability • symmetric: AB BA • spatially correlated: AB AX • not correlated across networks (e.g., I2 and commercial)
Outage-induced call abortion proability • Long interruption user likely to abandon call • from E.855 survey: P[holding] = e-t/17.26 (t in seconds) • half the users will abandon call after 12s • 2,566 have at least one outage • 946 of 2,566 expected to be dropped 1.53% of all calls
Conclusion • Availability in space is (mostly) solved availability in time restricts usability for new applications • initial investigation into service availability for VoIP • need to define metrics for, say, web access • unify packet loss and “no Internet dial tone’’ • far less than “5 nines” • working on identifying fault sources and locations • looking for additional measurement sites
Quality and Performance Evaluation of VoIP End-points Wenyu Jiang Henning Schulzrinne Columbia University
Motivations • The quality of VoIP depends on both the network and the end-points • Extensive QoS literature on network performance, e.g., IntServ, DiffServ • Focus is on limiting network loss & delay • Little is known about the behavior of VoIP end-points
Performance Metrics for VoIP End-points • Mouth-to-ear (M2E) delay • compare network delay • Clock skew • whether it causes any voice glitches • amount of clock drift • Silence suppression behavior • whether the voice is clipped (depends much on hangover time) • robustness to non-speech input, e.g., music • Robustness to packet loss • voice quality under packet loss • Acoustic echo cancellation • Jitter adaptation: delay > max(jitter)?
Measurement Approach • Capture both original and output audio • Use adelay program to measure M2E delay • auto correlation • no clock synchronization needed • Assume a LAN environment by default • Serve as a baseline of reference, or lower bound
VoIP End-points Tested • Hardware End-points • Cisco, 3Com and Pingtel IP phones • Mediatrix 1-line SIP/PSTN Gateway • Software clients • Microsoft Messenger, NetMeeting (Win2K, WinXP) • Net2Phone (NT, Win2K, Win98) • Sipc/RAT (Solaris, Ultra-10) • Robust Audio Tool (RAT) from UCL as media client • Operating parameters: • In most cases, codec is G.711 -law, packet interval is 20ms
IP Phone Hardware • DSP for audio coding, AEC • C for protocol processing • embedded OS (Linux, Windriver, …) with web browser • Ethernet interface, maybe with hub
Example M2E Delay Plot • 3Com to Cisco, shown with gaps > 1sec • Delay adjustments correlate with gaps, despite 3Com phone has no silence suppression
Visual Illustration of M2E Delay Drop, Snapshot #1 • 3Com to Cisco 1-1 case • Left/upper channel is original audio • Highlighted section shows M2E delay (59ms)
Snapshot #2 • M2E delay drops to 49ms, at time of 4:16
Snapshot #3 • Presence of a gap during the delay change
Effect of RTP Marker Bits on Delay Adjustments • Cisco phone sends M-bits, whereas Pingtel phone does not • Presence of M-bits results in more adjustments
Sender Characteristics • Certain senders may introduce delay spikes, despite operating on a LAN
Average M2E Delays for IP phones and sipc • Averaging the M2E delay allows more compact presentation of end-point behaviors • Receiver (especially RAT) plays an important role in M2E delay
Average M2E Delays for PC Software Clients • Messenger 2000 wins the day • Its delay as receiver (68ms) is even lower than Messenger XP, on the same hardware • It also results in slightly lower delay as sender • NetMeeting is a lot worse (> 400ms) • Messenger’s delay performance is similar to or better than a GSM mobile phone.
Delay Behaviors for PC Clients, contd. • Net2Phone’s delay is also high • ~200-500ms • V1.5 reduces PC->PSTN delay • PC-to-PC calls have fairly high delays
Effect of Clock Skew: Cisco to 3Com, Experiment 1-1 • Symptom of playout buffer underflow • Waveforms are dropped • Occurred at point of delay adjustment • Bugs in software?
Clock Skew Rates • Mostly symmetric between two devices • RAT (Sun Ultra-10) has unusually high drift rates, > 300 ppm (parts per million) • High clock skews confirmed in many (but not all) PCs and workstations
Drift Rates for PC Clients • Drift Rates not always symmetric! • But appears to be consistent between Messenger 2K/XP and Net2Phone on the same PC • Existence of 2 clocking circuits in sound card?
Packet Loss Concealment • Common PLC methods • Silence substitution (worst) • Packet repetition, with optional fading • Extrapolation (one-sided) • Interpolation (two-sided), best quality • Use deterministic bursty loss pattern • 3/100 means 3 consecutive losses out of every 100 packets • Easier to locate packet losses • Tested 1/100, 3/100, 1/20, 5/100, etc.
PLC Behaviors • Loss tolerance (at 20ms interval) • By measuring loss-induced gaps in output audio • 3Com and Pingtel phones: 2 packet losses • Cisco phone: 3 packet losses • Level of audio distortion by packet loss • Inaudible at 1/100 for all 3 phones • Inaudible at 3/100 and 1/20 for Cisco phone, yet audible to very audible for the other two. • Cisco phone is the most robust • Probably uses interpolation
Effect of PLC on Delay • No affirmative effect on M2E delay • E.g., sipc to Pingtel
Silence Suppression • Why? • Saves bandwidth • May reduce processing power (e.g., in conferencing mixer) • Facilitates per-talkspurt delay adjustment • Key parameters • Silence detection threshold • Hangover time, to delay silence suppression and avoid end clipping of speech • Usually 200ms is long enough [Brady ’68]
Hangover Time • Measured by feeding ON-OFF waveforms and monitor RTP packets • Cisco phone’s is the longest (2.3-2.36 sec), then Messenger (1.06-1.08 sec), then NetMeeting (0.56-0.58 sec) • A long hangover time is not necessarily bad, as it reduces voice clipping • Indeed, no unnatural gaps are found • Does waste a bit more bandwidth
Robustness of Silence Detectors to Music • On-hold music is often used in customer support centers • Need to ensure music is played without any interruption due to silence suppression • Tested with a 2.5-min long soundtrack • Messenger starts to generate many unwanted gaps at input level of -24dB • Cisco phone is more robust, but still fails from input level of -41.4dB
Acoustic Echo Cancellation • Important for hands-free/conferencing (business) applications • Primary metric: Echo Return Loss (ERL) • Measured by LAN-sniffing RTP packets • Most IP phones support AEC • ERL depends slightly on input level and speaker-phone volume • Usually > 40 dB (good AEC performance)
M2E Delay under Jitter • Delay properties under the LAN environment serves as a baseline of reference • When operating over the Internet: • Fixed portion of delay adds to M2E delay as a constant • Variable portion (jitter) has a more complex effect • Initial test • Used typical cable modem delay traces • Tested RAT to Cisco • No audible distortion due to late loss • Added delay is normal
M2E Delay under Jitter, contd. • Cisco phone generally within expectation • Can follow network delay change timely • Takes longer (10-20sec) to adapt to decreasing delay • Does not overshoot playout delay • More end-points to be examined Artificial Trace Real Trace with Spikes
Conclusions • Average M2E Adelay: • Low (mostly < 80ms) for hardware IP phones • Software clients: lowest for Messenger 2000 (68.5ms) • Application (receiver) most vital in determining delay • Poor implementation easily undoes good network QoS • Clock skew high on SW clients (RAT, Net2Phone) • Packet loss concealment quality • Acceptable in all 3 IP phones tested, w. Cisco more robust • Silence detector behavior • Long hangover time, works well for speech input • But may falsely predict music as silence • Acoustic Echo Cancellation: good on most IP phones • Playout delay behavior: good based on initial tests
Future Work • Further tests with more end-points on how jitter influences M2E delay • Measure the sensitivity (threshold) of various silence detectors • Investigate the non-symmetric clock drift phenomena • Additional experiments as more brands of VoIP end-points become available