Research on assessment method of network quality performance for a private data network

These authors focuses on an assessment method of network quality performance research for a private data network which can be made up of either leased lines or IP-Virtual Private Network (IP/VPN). It is the very difficult to obtain real-time monitoring assessment information for leased lines in a point-to-point network from the traditional network evaluation methods; the reason for this is that a variety of network infrastructures and traffic are applied in this kind of network. The typical parameters measured for network performance assessment include packet loss, delay, throughput, and so on. These are difficult to interpret in terms of excellent, good, fair, poor, or bad for a network performance. Moreover, judge the quality of network by customers is always based on the subjective perception of quality which is a less objective assessment in practical cases. However, the network providers need a comprehensive and quantized method for network performance monitoring and evaluation, and need to satisfy the commitment of Service Level Agreement (SLA) for customers. This paper proposed a comprehensive multiple indexes assessment method based on the Dempster–Shafer (D–S) evidence structure for comprehensive service assessment or specific service assessment, such as data transmission service evaluation as well as voice and video service evaluation. The real testing data is used to verify the viability of this method. Based on the proposed method, the relative software was produced and has been tested in a real network. The testing results show that this method can offer the real-time and objective service performance assessments for users and the network providers under the full-service operation.