ACTIVITY-AND DEPENDENCY-BASED SERVICE QUALITY MONITORING

Many services measure quality of service (QoS) according to abstract metrics based on general heuristics of QoS determinants (e.g., VoIP service providers may presume that QoS is predominantly determined by network performance). However, users' QoS perceptions are often based on their experiences with particular activities of the service, which may utilize different service paths having different QoS determinants. Therefore, QoS may be measured by identifying the activities of the service, and the dependencies among the components of such services; for respective activities and dependencies, identifying a service path from the source to the user, and the segments comprising the service path; measuring the quality of the segments of the service path; and calculating the QoS of the activity according to the QoS of the segments of the service path providing the activity. This approach may yield QoS information of greater relevance to the users' experience and with greater analytic value.