Quality of service monitoring: Performance metrics across proprietary content domains

TL;DR

This paper introduces a QoS monitoring system to evaluate the impact of proprietary content domains on broadband quality, using field tests to detect potential divides in the Internet caused by network architecture and policy trends.

Contribution

It presents a novel QoS monitoring software deployed on subscribers' computers to measure connection quality across content sites, highlighting potential proprietary space effects.

Findings

Systematic differences in connection quality detected between affiliated and non-affiliated sites.

QoS metrics can identify threats of proprietary content spaces dividing the Internet.

Field test data demonstrates the software's capability to monitor network performance.

Abstract

We propose a quality of service (QoS) monitoring program for broadband access to measure the impact of proprietary network spaces. Our paper surveys other QoS policy initiatives, including those in the airline, and wireless and wireline telephone industries, to situate broadband in the context of other markets undergoing regulatory devolution. We illustrate how network architecture can create impediments to open communications, and how QoS monitoring can detect such effects. We present data from a field test of QoS-monitoring software now in development. We suggest QoS metrics to gauge whether information "walled gardens" represent a real threat for dividing the Internet into proprietary spaces. To demonstrate our proposal, we are placing our software on the computers of a sample of broadband subscribers. The software periodically conducts a battery of tests that assess the quality of connections from the subscriber's computer to various content sites. Any systematic differences in connection quality between affiliated and non-affiliated content sites would warrant research into the behavioral implications of those differences. QoS monitoring is timely because the potential for the Internet to break into a loose network of proprietary content domains appears stronger than ever. Recent court rulings and policy statements suggest a growing trend towards relaxed scrutiny of mergers and the easing or elimination of content ownership rules. This policy environment could lead to a market with a small number of large, vertically integrated network operators, each pushing its proprietary content on subscribers.