YoMoApp: A tool for analyzing QoE of YouTube HTTP adaptive streaming in mobile networks

Abstract

The performance of YouTube in mobile networks is crucial to network operators, who try to find a trade-off between cost-efficient handling of the huge traffic amounts and high perceived end-user Quality of Experience (QoE). This paper introduces YoMoApp (YouTube Performance Monitoring Application), an Android application, which passively monitors key performance indicators (KPIs) of YouTube adaptive video streaming on end-user smartphones. The monitored KPIs (i.e., player state/events, buffer, and video quality level) can be used to analyze the QoE of mobile YouTube video sessions. YoMoApp is a valuable tool to assess the performance of mobile networks with respect to YouTube traffic, as well as to develop optimizations and QoE models for mobile HTTP adaptive streaming. We test YoMoApp through real subjective QoE tests showing that the tool is accurate to capture the experience of end-users watching YouTube on smartphones.