That issue, called quality-of-service (complete with its new industry buzz-acronym Qos), is being addressed head-on by a company called Keynote. What the company does, through its listening and rating services, is measure your end-stream and pin down the points of transmission where your brilliant stream becomes a dud so you can go there and fix the problem. By doing so, Keynote serves in the capacity of testing and diagnosis, benchmarking, and assurance. You can use Keynote numbers to prove the quality of experience you provide to your end users and can use them in service level agreements with your vendors. Digital Island, for instance, writes in Keynote numbers in all their service level contracts. They're an independent third party, and a useful tool not only in testing what you're already doing but testing different distributors like I-Beam and Akamai to see who is going to give your specific feed the best quality.

Keynote's P's (Matt Parks) and Qos
Exactly what problems can Keynote find and tell you about? Matt Parks, product manager for Keynote's Streaming Perspective service explains: