Estimating quality metric for latency sensitive traffic flows in communication networks

A network node operative in a mobile communication network, and implementing an access gateway(AccessGw) operative to estimate a quality metric for a packet flow associated with an application and carrying latency sensitive content, the network node characterized by:

• communication circuitry;
• and
• processing circuitry operatively coupled to the communication circuitry and adapted to:
• obtain one or more algorithms for estimating a late loss and the quality metric for the packet flow associated with the application;
• and
• monitor network traffic;
• classify packets as belonging to the packet flow associated with the application;
• analyze network traffic parameters for the packets belonging to the packet flow associated with the application;
• based on the obtained late loss algorithm, predict a late loss for the packet flow associated with the application, the late loss being a maximum allowed jitter before a receiver will consider a quanta of data to be lost;
• based on the obtained quality metric algorithm and the predicted late loss, predict a quality metric for the packet flow associated with the application;
• and
• report the predicted quality metric.