From Noise to Zapping : Quality of Service Issues Affecting Internet TV Distribution

Abstract: The Internet and the development and deployment of new access networktechnologieshas opened up for new information and communication applications.The mobile or cellular networks have evolved from a facility for voice call totoday's IP only network. The evolution has also allowed for re-use of old andavailable infrastructure for technologies that increases the available capacity farbeyond the original objective. The strive of having the Internet as the only'carrier' for all applications, leads to change of transport channel for 'old' andwell-known and well-established services. The customer thus expects the oldbehaviour - it is still the same service - but the changed channels makes theapplications behave dierently.This thesis discusses performance parameters and monitoring with focus on DigitalSubscriber Line (DSL) links and TV over Internet (IPTV) or Video onDemand (VoD). Studies of some typical disturbances that degrade the DSLchannel and their impact on IP datagram transportation, and thus on IPTVQuality of Experience (QoE), are presented. Also, proling of VoD users forpre-fetching and terminal caching is shown to be a possible path for increasingthe QoE and lower the network utilisation.