Apparatus and method for quantitative measurement of voice quality in packet network environments

A system and a method for quantitatively measuring voice transmission quality within a voice-over-data-network such as a telephony-enabled LAN utilize speech recognition to measure the quality of voice transmission. A first aspect of the invention involves determining the suitability of the LAN for voice communications. A voice sample is selected by a first terminal and is transmitted to a second terminal on the LAN a number of times. The first terminal introduces an incrementally larger quantity of noise into each transmission of the voice packet. The second terminal performs speech recognition for each successively received voice sample and determines the accuracy for each speech recognition session. The amount of noise which drops the speech recognition accuracy below a threshold level provides a measure of the suitability of the LAN for voice communications. During normal operation of the LAN, speech recognition accuracy tests are performed between various endpoints to monitor voice transmission quality.