Saiz Macías, Eduardo  

ABSTRACT
Many years of research have been dedicated toward the definition of sophisticated quality of service (QoS) measurement tools and methods. Nonetheless, the results given to end users by most commonly used online speed measurement tools are still far from being accurate. Among other factors, the reliability of the measurement methods is affected by different static and dynamic constraints of involved network nodes and TCP/IP implementations. The clarification of such uncertainties will help establish the baseline for the definition of any comparable and technically feasible measurement methodology, in terms of measurement periods, number of concurrent connections, and convergence time. This article presents a comprehensive description of the research work and proposes mechanisms, aiming to obtain a full understanding of cross-layer effects during a speed test targeting end users.

ABSTRACT
The current financial situation, together with the new market conditions, has led to major changes in the ICT sector over the last few years. Many services that in the past were only offered by operators are now held by third parties through the cloud, which has caused a shift towards new business models at the expense of a more traditional market. Furthermore, these economic changes have conducted to socio-cultural transformations with great impact on the user’s behaviors. In this paper a cloud platform for the measurement and evaluation of the Quality of Experience (QoE) is presented. The platform is based in a model (QoXphere) that ensures the user satisfaction in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and the provider economic benefits, as demanded in current market situation. In addition, the proposed cloud architecture intends to help in the advance of the work item recently opened in ITU-T to establish an ITU recognition procedure of testing laboratories with competence in ITU-T Recommendations by providing a unified cloud environment in which to validate them.

ABSTRACT
The telecommunications sector has experienced significant changes over the past few years. The advent and rise of new applications and services, together with a competitive market, has led to a complex scenario in which quality of service plays a major role. Under this condition, novel QoS regulation and standardization initiatives are required. During the last few years new terms and concepts, such as quality of experience or QoS perceived, have been included in the updated and new QoS-related standards as to better integrate the user's point of view, as opposed to only network performance parameters. The influence of the user's satisfaction on the quality of business has also been given increased attention in the regulation and standardization bodies recently. The result is a loose collection of metrics and models that are not standardized and do not integrate all aspects of quality. Such integration is necessary to assure the successful development of this sector. This paper presents a new and integrated QoS model (QoXphere) that is spherical, adaptive, and multi-layered.

ABSTRACT
The evolution of Internet access technologies, together with the wide diversity of customer devices, has led to a complex scenario where measuring basic metrics with accuracy has become a rather complicated task. Although nowadays there are a lot of tools to assess the rate of Internet speed, most of them share neither the methodology nor the infrastructure to produce comparable results.

In this regard, the development of a unified approach to measure the Internet speed would be beneficial for all ICT players. The establishment of such proposal would inspire better confidence in consumers through the provision of precise comparisons, and it would also be very useful to operators, regulators and providers. Towards this aim, the ITU-T has been working on the definition of a unified methodology and measurement framework to assess the rate of Internet speed.

This paper presents a detailed description of the work that is being done at present in the definition of the aforementioned framework.

ABSTRACT
After several years of research towards sophisticated QoS measurement tools and methods, the results given to end-users by most commonly used on-line speed measurement tools are still far from being precise. In order to define a reliable Internet speed measurement methodology for end- users, the impact that the static and dynamic constraints of network nodes and TCP/IP implementations could impose must be first carefully analyzed. Such constraints will deter- mine the measurement methodology to be defined in terms of measurement periods, number of concurrent connections and convergence time by deployment of controlled simula- tion/emulation environments and real world comparisons. This paper presents a detailed description of the works and leaves hints to be followed, aiming to get a full understanding of cross-layer effects during a speed test targeting end-user.

ABSTRACT
The current financial situation, together with the new market conditions, has led to major changes in the ICT sector over the last few years. Many of the services that were once only offered by operators are now being provided by third parties through the cloud. This situation has promoted new business models against the traditional ones. Furthermore, these economic changes have conducted to socio-cultural transformations with great impact on the user's behaviors. In this paper a cloud platform for the measurement and evaluation of the Quality of Experience (QoE) is presented. The platform is based in a model (QoXphere) that ensures the user satisfaction in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and the provider economic benefits, as demanded in current market situation. In addition, the proposed cloud architecture intends to aid to advance in the work item opened recently in ITU-T to establish an ITU recognition procedure of testing laboratories with competence in ITU-T Recommendations.

ABSTRACT
The telecommunications sector has experienced significant changes over the past few years. The advent and rise of new applications and services, together with a competitive market, has led to a complex scenario in which quality of service (QoS) plays a major role. Under this condition, novel QoS regulation and standardization initiatives are required. During the last few years new terms and concepts, such as Quality of Experience (QoE) or QoS Perceived (QoP), have been included in the updated and new QoS-related standards as to better integrate the user’s point of view, as opposed to only network performance parameters. The influence of the user’s satisfaction on the Quality of Business (QoBiz) has also been given increased attention in the regulation and standardization bodies recently. The result is a loose collection of metrics and models that are not standardized and do not integrate all aspects of quality. Such integration is necessary to assure the successful development of this sector. This paper presents a new and integrated QoS model (QoXphere) that is spherical, adaptive and multi-layered.

ABSTRACT
The need of a neutral Quality of Service (QoS) measurement system is usually demanded by Internet Service Providers (ISP) as well as their customers in order to evaluate their networks, and, therefore, establish comparisons with other providers. The service velocimetro.org and the measurement infrastructure QoSMETER, both developed by Networking Quality and Security Research Group (NQaS) at the University of the Basque Country, are a reliable solution to this demand. The aim of this paper is to show that, in due to the prolific growth of the Internet technologies over the last years, the merging of both projects is required. Several modifications are needed for that purpose and a procedure plan is required to minimize the effect of the plausible integration malfunctions in the services that are already deployed and accessible to users.

ABSTRACT
This article tries to specify the basis of a project about a new system to control and manage an Internet quality test that measures the access speed of Internet users. We will explain the current situation of the service to look for the necessities, and then try to propose tools to solve those necessities. These tools must be integrated in a common interface to give the administrator of the service an easy-to-use environment as long as a powerful system to manage the quality test tool. To conclude, we will propose the necessary technologies to implement the different parts of the system.