VoIP Quality of Service Test: What and How

One of the first things that you need to do for yourself or your business after switching to VoIP is to set up a consistent and continuous VoIP quality of service test, or a VoIP monitoring system that runs 24/7/365. This is the guarantee that your VoIP service delivers the good and reliable service it's supposed to. Otherwise, switching to VoIP is a moot move. If you can't get consistent service, you risk lost opportunities and connections.

What a VoIP Quality of Service Test Monitors

Regular VoIP quality of service test, through VoIP monitoring, involves mapping the performance of key VoIP quality indicators: MOS (Mean Opinion Score), Latency and Packet Loss.

Mean Opinion Score has its roots in traditional telephony, wherein testers scored voice quality while listening for impairment in a quiet room. In VoIP, the scoring system is more objective, wherein service impairment is assessed according to network performance.

Latency pertains to delays in the transport of data/ voice packets, which can originate from the sender, recipient or network. Latency can be rooted to packetization, jitter buffer or propagation. Whatever the cause, high latency rates affect your VoIP quality.

Packet loss pertains to dropped data packets that are usually caused by network congestion and faulty equipment. Even a small fraction of packet loss is unacceptable in business VoIP.

So how do you test for VoIP quality of service? Get the services of a reliable VoIP monitoring company, such as VoIP Spear.

How: Your VoIP Monitoring Options

There are different kinds of VoIP monitoring services to consider.

For big businesses with wide operations and big pockets, Appneta provides a good option. Its PathView network and server monitoring offers monitoring beyond what's required in VoIP monitoring because it also monitors applications. This is really more for the big boys with heavy monitoring needs. Plus, you need big pockets for this too. A device costs $5,000 each and you need one per server that you want to monitor.

Another option is the low-zero cost monitoring systems that you use whenever you want to test your VoIP network. An example here is Visualware's MySpeed testing service, which tests your VoIP only when you want it to.

While this is comparatively very cheap, it is also useless. Remember that in true VoIP testing, you need to test 24/7/365. This gives you a true profile of your VoIP quality. One-time testing only shows you your VoIP network performance  that one second when you sent test packets. It doesn't show you how your system performs 99.99% of the time -- when your clients and partners might actually be trying to get in touch with you.

The better option, especially for small- and medium-sized business, is VoIP Spear's no-installation 24/7/265 global VoIP monitoring service. VoIP Spear tests your VoIP endpoints from our strategically-located servers worldwide. The system tests your MOS, and other VoIP quality performance parameters, such as jitter, latency and packet loss.

One of the best things here is that you don't need an extra hand to manage and assess your VoIP testing results. Once you sign up, you can access your account, and configure your control panel. It's only a matter of plugging in your VoIP endpoints and selecting your testing server. Reports are easy to understand. And there's an online guide to help you out, just in case. 

Sign up now: http://www.voipspear.com/signup 

Alternative Tools for VoIP Call Quality Test

A VoIP Call Quality Test is not just for network administrators and VoIP service managers. This is something that VoIP subscribers need to do if they want to maximize their  benefits from digital telephony. VoIP can really take over all telecommunications needs. You just need to ensure that you constantly do a VoIP quality of service test to monitor your service's performance. This way, you know right away when there's a problem. You can address this through a tools/ gears upgrade, a change in network providers or VoIP service providers, or a call to technical support.

There are several tools you can use to do a VoIP call quality test. Of course, the very very basic here is to do a ping test from your computer. This isn't ideal. A simple ping test does not point out where you're having problems. It just lets you know how fast (or slow) packets travel through your network. And ping tests as a your VoIP quality of service test have no monitoring component, unless you intend to sit in front of your monitor all day staring at your CMD screen.

The least you can do for VoIP call quality test is use a Network Analyzer tool, such as Wire Shark's and NAST's network analyzer tools. This tool is alternately called packet analyzer or packet sniffer. What this does is it intercepts and analyzes web traffic. Analyses are based on RFC. While you don't really get the specifics that matter in VoIP, you can at least tell if your web connections are fast enough for digital telecommunications.

Another alternative VoIP quality of service test is the Packet Analyzer. An example of a packet analyzer is VoIP Spear's call quality test and monitoring services. It works like network analyzer. Additionally, it also analyzes RTP streams and VoIP protocols. You then know how your network is doing based on latency, packet loss and jitter. This is a more reliable way of testing and monitoring your VoIP service.

You may also want to consider other tools for VoIP call quality test: the VoIP Probe and the VoIP Quality Testers. However, both of these tools are more suitable for VoIP service providers who want to be on top of how their service is performing. VoIP Probe is implemented at several service endpoints, where traffic is then analyzed. VoIP Quality Testers, on the other hand, are more intrusive testing methods that send audio packets to test the network. These files are tested using  the P .OLQA or the P .862.