QoE Estimation for the Wi-Fi Edge with Gradient Boosting-based Machine Learning

An integral part of the Intent-Based Networking paradigm is estimating and improving the end-user quality of experience (QoE). Estimating user experience from the (wide-area) network data alone does not accurately represent the performance at customer premises since Wi-Fi at the edge also significantly affects the perceived QoE. We propose machine learning-based estimation of the end-users’ perceived QoE for web browsing and video streaming applications, based on Wi-Fi statistics. We implement support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT), multilayer perceptron (MLP), XGBoost, and CatBoost algorithms and compare their performance. To the best of our knowledge, our CatBoost-based model yields the highest accuracy to date, 0.92 R
²
, in estimating the QoE for web browsing based on Wi-Fi statistics. Our experiments also show that the XGBoost-based QoE estimator outperformed the neural network-based model in estimating the QoE for video streaming. Our work demonstrates that network operators can infer the user-perceived QoE in a Wi-Fi network through telemetry data obtained by passive measurements.