VoIP Call Quality Issues

When you transition to VoIP, be prepared to deal with typical service problems. These are natural conditions. Normally, you shouldn't experience any service disruption or distortions even when you have these. However, if you are with a so-so network or VoIP service provider, you will feel the effects of VoIP call quality issues.

• Know about problems before they affect your day-to-day operations
• Stay on top of how your VoIP service performs
• Enjoy the full benefits of VoIP

Typical VoIP call quality issues should not affect your VoIP performance. For instance, latency, which is the delay transport of data/voice packets, is normal. Even traditional telecommunications experience latency. But if it goes beyond 150ms one way, you will definitely experience voice quality distortions.

For certain circumstances, you can address VoIP call quality issues yourself. Here are some tips:

Slow connection: This is one of the worst things to have when you want to use VoIP. Digital communications rely on your network connections. Fast connections mean that you can have unhindered conversations. When you suffer from slow connections, the best thing to do is upgrade your service. This means either getting a better service project with the same or a different service provider.

Bad equipment: It could be that you experience VoIP call quality issues and the problem is on your end. You may have the wrong router for prioritizing VoIP calls. Or, you may have outdated equipment that result in voice quality distortion. The best solution here is to upgrade to a better router wherein you'd be able to configure the QoS. With the router's QoS, you can prioritize VoIP. This lessens the bandwidth allotment for other applications, particularly the bandwidth-heavy applications ones, like gaming applications.

Delays: All forms of telecommunications experience delays or latency. The crucial issue is the length of delay. There's tolerable delay and there's delay that ruins your overall user experience. With VoIP, the two-way delay should only add up to 250ms. A rate above means that there is disruption every so often. The delays may even be causing dropped packets and gaps in the conversation.

There are several ways of dealing with delays, depending on the cause of delays. If the cause is on your end – your equipment may be out of date or defective, or your network and VoIP connections may be bad – these are situations for which you can implement fixes.

Cut wires and incorrectly setup equipment can be fixed by changing cable wires, or upgrading to a newer model.

Sometimes, too, a simple way of fixing delays is to set yourself up closer to your router. Connecting via wi-fi will cause delays and if its too much, all you need to do is go closer.

A surefire way of correcting delays caused by your system is by prioritizing voice packets. You do this by configuring your QoS. Most modern routers now come with QoS access where you can set how much priority is given to different applications. To prioritize VoIP, you just have to prioritize voice applications while reducing priority of bandwidth heavy applications, such as gaming applications.

To stay on top of how your VoIP performs, set up an account with VoIP Spear, a VoIP monitoring service that offers free trial accounts and personal, residential and business options.

VoIP Spear Adds New Monitoring Servers

It's good to know that the VoIP Spear team has expanded its network of testing servers. We are already relying on their VoIP monitoring service. The addition of servers means that test results become more accurate, especially when it comes to endpoints outside North America. With new testing server locations in North America, Europe, Asia and South America, users can now select where monitoring tests originate.

North America: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami
Europe: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Moscow, Milan, Madrid
Asia: Hong Kong, Japan (Tokyo), Singapore, India (Chennai)
South America: Chile (Vina del Mar), Panama (Panama City)

VoIP Spear's lead development team took 6 months to perfect this truly global VoIP monitoring service. Users have free reign on which servers test their endpoints. They can set it up when they set up or edit endpoint (bottom of the page). We're happy with how things turned out. We've updated some of our endpoints. The rest are in the USA so they're good, as is.

We are looking forward to more from VoIP Spear. Even without these new servers, we were already quite happy with their service. I suppose we should be ecstatic now lol! But seriously, VoIP Spear is providing us VoIP service providers with a great, reliable and hassle-free service. I really appreciate that the team continues to work toward improvement and expansion. http://voipspear.com/signup

Three Questions To Ask Before Your Switch to VoIP

Switching to VoIP is a major step and is something that you need to do when you want incomparable savings in your phone bill. This New Year is a great time to do this. Not only will you benefit from the leaps and bounds made by VoIP technology. You will enjoy low signup rates and phone bills.

If you want VoIP for your business, however, there are questions you need to answer first. These give you a good assessment of your organization’s readiness in making the big switch.

Will it improve your work efficiency and productivity?

One of the things you’d want to happen with a switch to VoIP is an increase in productivity and efficiency. After all, VoIP – through communications convergence – lets you do so many things with data in digital format. Plus, don’t forget the savings from VoIP. You can do a lot with that to improve your day-to-day performance.

However, VoIP can take its toll on your network. If you are not sure about the capacity of your network because all that you’ve been doing is browsing and file-sharing, then test it using the services of VoIP Spear. Being on a poor network can cost you. The data packet that run through your network will multiply by at least 4X because of voice packets. If your network cannot take this much traffic, then you are also compromising other tasks done within the network. This can affect the quality and quantity of work done within a day.

Can your network handle VoIP?

This is the logical ‘next question,’ of course. Your network directly affects your VoIP benefits. If you have limited bandwidth, you will need to upgrade your account. However, if your network is really bad, it is ideal to not switch to VoIP until you find a better one, a service provider with proven support for VoIP telecommunications.

An incapable network means that you are likely to suffer from bad voice call quality. You will experience delays/ pauses in calls, as well as jitter and packet delays.

Can you afford to equip your office for VoIP?

A typical office cannot use VoIP just via computer and headphones. This takes away from accessibility and convenience. SIP phones or ATA boxes are necessary for workstations with phone units. You will also need an IP PBX system or a gateway device for your old PBX. All this can cost. So, alongside your VoIP account fees, you will need to take care of this at the start.

When you do make a switch to VoIP, treat this as an investment. Install whatever’s necessary so that this investment lasts. Make sure that you have an account with VoIP Spear, and that you are monitoring all your endpoints. This tests your endpoints for performance lapses, which you or your support team can then address. 

VoIP Call Quality Test: Why Do You Need It

VoIP, as an alternative to wireline telephony, has made leaps and bounds in close to a decade since its commercial development. It has become a true option to landlines, offering consumers with cheaper communications rates and more accessibility.

However, an issue with VoIP has always been its dependence on your network connections. If you have unreliable internet, you are bound to experience interference and choppy connections during your conversation. If you still have a free account with VoIP service providers, such as Skype, this might be okay. You can ignore fluctuating quality of service if you have not completely switched to VoIP.

However, homes and businesses that have made the VoIP switch and rely on it as their main means of communications need to have at least a 99% uptime – and not just that. They have to have reliable and good quality internet connections if they want to talk without echo, static and other possible audio disturbances.

This is where doing a VoIP call quality test becomes important. Technically, you don't have to have an active VoIP account to begin testing your VoIP readiness. With third party services, such as VoIP Spear, you can test your IP endpoint and make it go through a series of threshold checks. Through these tests, you can monitor key aspects of your network connections like jitter, packet loss and latency.

VoIP Spear measures VoIP quality using MOS or Mean Opinion Score, which is the industry standard in grading VoIP service quality. Through your MOS, you can get a pretty accurate assessment of your network's VoIP suitability.

And you need to do consistent VoIP call quality test. This is one of the best ways to be on top of your VoIP service. VoIP is definitely the next level in telecommunications. Before we get the most of it though, everything has to be in place. A VoIP service is only as good as the network it's on.

Welcome to the VoIP Quality Test Blog

Great that you found us. Welcome to the VoIP Quality Test and Monitoring blog!

We're all about VoIP quality of service test and all other VoIP service issues. Why? Well, we believe that VoIP is really the next phase in the development of telecommunications. Alas, its connected technologies, such as network connections, SIP phones, softphones, and the like, affect how VoIP performs as a communications media. Of course, there are also the differences in VoIP service providers and the hardware and software they use to deliver services.

All this affects how a VoIP subscriber enjoys his service. Call quality may suffer, and this affects the user experience. It can get so bad that it turns the user off to VoIP. This shouldn't happen. With all the progress made in VoIP technology, everyone with a good network coverage should be able enjoy VoIP as an alternate -- if not main -- means of communication.

Through the VoIP Quality Test and Monitoring blog, we will discuss all issues that affect VoIP, and how users and VoIP service administrators can address these. It starts with a simple voice quality test, of course. But, we'll talk more about that later. Check back in here for weekly updates.