Manual Chapter : Reporting Quality of Experience and Video Usage

Applies To:

Show Versions Show Versions

BIG-IP PEM

  • 14.0.1, 14.0.0, 13.1.5, 13.1.4, 13.1.3, 13.1.1, 13.1.0
Manual Chapter

Overview: Reporting quality of experience and video usage

In Policy Enforcement Manager™ (PEM), you can gather report on subscriber video traffic consumption across different devices (phone, tablet, PC or TV). This information helps to analyze user quality of experience (QoE).

After a PEM and QoE profile is enabled on a virtual, the QoE module detects video flows and gathers data. When the QoE data is passed to PEM, a subscriber QoE report is generated based on the corresponding policy settings. The reports can be sent over syslog (HSL) or IPFIX.

PEM has visibility in to the following components:
  • Subscriber
  • The media traffic
  • Control for video optimization
  • The point of control for TCP optimization.
  • Custom policy provisioning using iRules®

Task summary

Creating a publisher

Before you create a publisher, you have to create a HSL pool that needs to be associated to a destination. Ensure that at least one destination associated with a pool of remote log servers exists on the BIG-IP® system.
Create a publisher to specify where the BIG-IP system sends log messages for specific resources.
  1. On the Main tab, click System > Logs > Configuration > Log Publishers .
    The Log Publishers screen opens.
  2. Click Create.
  3. In the Name field, type a unique, identifiable name for this publisher.
  4. For the Destinations setting, select a destination from the Available list, and click << to move the destination to the Selected list.
    Note: If you are using a formatted destination, select the destination that matches your log servers, such as Remote Syslog, Splunk, or ArcSight.
  5. Click Finished.

Adding Quality of Experience profile to the virtual server

Before creating a video Quality of Experience (QoE) virtual server, you need to have created and configured a video QoE profile.
You can assign video QoE profile to a virtual server.
  1. On the Main tab, click Local Traffic > Virtual Servers .
    The Virtual Server List screen opens.
  2. Click the Create button.
    The New Virtual Server screen opens.
  3. From the HTTP Profile list, select http.
  4. In the Resources area, for the iRules setting, from the Available list, select the name of the QoE iRule that you want to assign, and move the name into the Enabled list.
  5. In the Resources area of the screen, from the Default Pool list, select the relevant pool name.
  6. Click Finished.
  7. On the Main tab, click Local Traffic > Virtual Servers .
    The Virtual Server List screen opens.
  8. Click the name of the virtual server you want to modify.
  9. From the Configuration list, select Advanced.
  10. From the QoE list, select a QoE profile to attach to the virtual server.
  11. Click Update to save the changes.
This assigns the video QoE profile and iRules to the virtual server.

Configuring QoE Reporting

Before you can enable the Quality of Experience (QoE) attribute at a policy level, you have to enable QoE in the profile section.
In an enforcement policy, a media-quality QoE report action can be added, that can be added with other reporting actions in the same rule.
  1. On the Main tab, click Policy Enforcement > Policies .
    The Policies screen opens.
  2. Click the name of the enforcement policy you want to add rules to.
    The properties screen for the policy opens.
  3. In the Policy Rules area, click Add.
    The New Rule screen opens.
  4. In the Name field, type a name for the rule.
  5. In the Precedence field, type an integer that indicates the precedence for the rule in relation to the other rules. Number 1 has the highest precedence. Rules with higher precedence are evaluated before other rules with lower precedence.
    Tip: All rules in a policy are run concurrently. Precedence takes effect when there are conflicting rules. The conflict occurs when the traffic matches two rules and the policy actions from these rules differ. For example, if you have rule 1 with precedence 10 and Gate Status disabled for a search engine, and you have rule 2 with precedence 11 and Gate Status enabled, then rule 1 is processed first because it has higher precedence. Rules conflict if they have identical or overlapping classification criteria (for the traffic that matches more than one rule). In some cases, different policy actions are not conflicting, and hence, applied in parallel.
  6. Use the Classification, URL, Flow, and Custom Criteria tabs to identify the traffic that you want to be affected by this rule.
  7. From the QoE Reporting list, select Enabled.
  8. In the QoE Destination setting, from the HSL list, select the name of the publisher that specifies the server or pool of remote HSL servers to send the logs and select the format script of the report from the Format Script list.
    Note: If you are using a formatted destination, select the publisher that matches your log servers, such as Remote Syslog, Splunk, or ArcSight.
  9. Click Finished.
You have created an enforcement policy with QoE report action.

QoE-based reporting format

In an enforcement policy, a rule can send QoE-based information about traffic that matches certain criteria to an external high-speed logging (HSL) server. The logs include the following comma-separated values in the order listed.

Field Description
Report id Identifies the reporting module (PEM) and the field value is 23003143.
Subscriber ID A unique identifier (up to 64 characters) for the subscriber initiating the session, such as a phone number. The subscriber ID type determines the format.
Source IP The IPv4 source address in the IP packet header.
Source Transport Port The source (L4) port.
Destination IP The IPv4 destination address in the IP packet header.
Destination Transport Port The IPv4 destination address in the IP packet header.
Protocol Identifier The IP Protocol field.
Media Type Different types of media, for example, MP4.
URL X SessionId The ID used to associate different segments of a whole video or audio.
Width Height The resolution of the video.
Bit Rate The number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time.
Frame Rate The frequency (rate) at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames.
Duration The length of time of the media.
Watched It is the length of time that the video has been watched.
Mos It is the value ranging 1 to 5, that evaluates the user-experience.

Example QoE-based reporting format

  
Apr 30 14:30:14 slot2/sush_vic_172 info tmm[4243]: 23003143,6,1.0.0,1430429414,610,404234567123456,IMSI,10.1.1.11,37112,11.1.1.100,80,6,2426616,0,320x240,FLV,,1,0,5
Apr 30 14:30:46 slot2/sush_vic_172 info tmm[4243]: 23003143,6,1.0.0,1430429446,88,404234567123456,IMSI,10.1.1.11,37113,11.1.1.100,80,6,164771,0,480x320,MP4,,70,0,4