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

Dealing with Packet Delay

The wonders of VoIP is all for nothing if you experience network problems that compromise the quality of your calls. Problems like packet delays may be minor irritants if these happen once in a blue moon. However, if this is a chronic problem, you should do something about it.

The solutions, when it comes to packet delay problems, can either be with you or your service provider. Sometimes, you just need a little tweaking on your end to enjoy better VoIP.

What Is Packet Delay

Packet delay refers to the delay in the travel time of data packets between endpoints. This delay is natural up to a certain degree. After all, data packets go through a series of hardware, plus the wireline telephone system. In a healthy network, this delay is not perceivable. You can use your VoIP and conversation is clear and without pauses.

However, in problematic networks or setups, packet delays are perceived by users as delays in audio and video, echo, feedback, and pauses in conversations, among other problems. In really bad situations, packet delays can affect how you enjoy (or not enjoy) VoIP.

Types of Packet Delays

There are two main types of packet delay, namely End System delays and IP network delays. Of these two, you can tweak settings to affect some end system delay issues.

IP network delays are delays that occur during the packet transmission. This may be caused by too much network traffic or being on a network that’s inappropriate for VoIP. The delay usually between ten to a thousand millisecond.

End system delays happen in the handling of the packets at the endpoints. Here, data packets go through decoding, encoding and buffering, with buffering being the main culprit in delays. Jitter buffer delay can take up to hundreds of milliseconds. Coding and decoding, on the other hand, only takes up to 40 milliseconds of delays total.

How Monitoring Your VoIP Helps

When you monitor your VoIP through third party services, such as VoIP Spear, you can know the root cause of your communication problems and be able to deal with this accordingly. VoIP monitoring services do consistent tests over a period of time, at set intervals. This means that you get a complete picture of your VoIP’s performance and can get to the problem right away, either to deal with this yourself or to report to your service provider.

Tweaks to Minimize Problems with Delay

There are things you can do at your end to help lessen problems caused by packet delays. Remember, however, that these are only tweaks.

1.      1.  Lessen the “path” that voice packets go through. If you are connecting to your internet via wifi, connect directly to your router instead.

2.     2.  Close all other applications that use up bandwidth. When you want to focus on VoIP, stick to that for the meantime. Close all applications that are not connected to VoIP, especially the big bandwidth eaters: file sharing and gaming.

3.       3. Customize your QoS setup. Your QoS refers to a tool when you login to your router. This lets you set upload and download speeds, bandwidth priorities. When you want to enjoy VoIP, give voice and video application top priority. Deprioritize gaming and file sharing. 

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.