Edinburgh Napier University

  Online video streaming using HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) is becoming the most popular content delivery mechanism for media services. Network and content providers would like to ensure a high degree of video Quality of Experience (QoE) for their end-users. However, traditional network-level metrics do not necessarily reflect the end-users' true perception of delivered content.We introduce an in-network QoE measurement framework (IQMF) that provides QoE monitoring for HAS streams as a service. The framework leverages Software Defined Networking for its control plane functionality to streamline non-intrusive quality monitoring and to offer a closed control loop for QoE-aware service management. IQMF adopts two specifically designed QoE metrics to capture the user experience of HAS streams with respect to video fidelity and switching impact. Finally, we used a pan-European SDN testbed to demonstrate how IQMF can be used as a foundation for in-network QoE measurement and service optimisation.