The effect of router buffer size on subjective gaming quality estimators based on delay and jitter

This work presents a study of the effect of router buffer size on the subjective quality experienced by players of online games, which is a service with very tight real-time requirements. Quality estimators for other real-time services like e.g. VoIP were developed years ago, and they are commonly used when planning a new telephony system. They mainly use delay and loss as KPI (Key Performance Indicators). Subjective quality estimators, analogous to VoIP ones, have also been developed for online games, and some of them are based on delay and jitter, but they do not consider packet loss because many games have highly effective loss handling algorithms. This fact has some implications related to the size of router buffers. If it is too big it may add delay and jitter which are not acceptable for gamers. So a study has been conducted, showing that tiny buffers (some tens of kB) are more adequate in order to maintain game quality in acceptable levels.