Packet video and voice are the dominant traffic sources in today’s
Internet. Numerous studies have dealt with the influence of packet
loss on video and voice quality. We elaborate on the root causes of packet
loss in the Internet and show by statistical methods how that affects the
quality of transmitted real-time data. We evaluate the mean number of
lost packets and the distribution of bit loss as quality indices of packet
transmission at a bottleneck link with insufficient bandwidth. The latter
information regarding the risk to lose packets for a known bandwidth of
a bottleneck link can be transferred to customers
