Skip to content

Introduction

Thank you for using Surfmeter!

Surfmeter is a suite of measurement solutions for the quality of video and web services. It is designed to be used by service providers, service technicians and end users.

Desktop Solutions

To understand the differences between the various Surfmeter for desktop products, we first need to introduce you to the two main components of Surfmeter that perform the actual measurements:

  • Surfmeter Automator is an automatization software for the Surfmeter Lab browser extension. Automator runs on the command line and enables the automated, scheduled measurement of web/video services and speed tests as well as native OS-based measurement programs like ping. Surfmeter Automator does not require a graphical display and can run in a standalone, virtualized environment. It also runs on Docker. To find out more about Surfmeter Automator, please read the Surfmeter Automator section.

  • Surfmeter Lab is web a browser extension, which is available for Google Chrome, and used in conjunction with Surfmeter Automator. It can measure the quality of various OTT video and web services as well as run speed tests through websites. It is a product for use on desktop PCs or laptops by service technicians and service providers when you want to manually trigger a measurement.

With regard to configuration, all comes down to what you want to measure and where you want to measure it. Surfmeter is designed to be flexible and can be used with various configurations. The Surfmeter Automator configuration can be split into two parts: the definition of the measurements themselves, and when to run them. The first part is defined in the Surfmeter “public configuration” file. The second part is defined in the “Automator configuration” file. We'll cover this topic in the Automator documentation where you can find an overview of those configs.

Measurement Data are the results of the measurements — each KPI and KQI may be vital for analyzing the performance and QoE of the various services you measure. All KPIs/KQIs are stored and calculated on our server and can be visualized by the Surfmeter Dashboard (see next section). The data is also available for download via the Surfmeter Server API.

Once you've collected measurement data, you can analyze it in various ways.

  • Surfmeter Dashboard: This is a suite of web applications that can be used to analyze measurement data. It is available as a hosted service and can also be optionally installed on your own server (on-premises).

  • Surfmeter Server (API): This is a REST API server that can be used to store and retrieve measurement data. You can download all your measurements from the Surfmeter Server and use them for further analysis.

Mobile Solutions

Surfmeter also offers mobile solutions for the measurement of video and web services.

  • Surfmeter Mobile Quality SDK is a mobile SDK for the measurement of video and web services. It is available for Android and can be seamlessly integrated into your mobile app. The measurements are run actively, and they report their results directly to the calling app. To find out more about Surfmeter Mobile Quality SDK, please read the Surfmeter Mobile Quality SDK section.

Data from the mobile SDK is only available on the client device itself. The data from our client analytics plugin is stored in a database and can be visualized in the Surfmeter Dashboard.

Player SDK

Surfmeter also offers a Player SDK for the measurement of video services in players across Android, iOS, and Web.

You can read more about the Player SDK in the Player SDK section.

Now that you know the components of Surfmeter, let's introduce you to further concepts to help you get started.