How to Solve VoIP Voice Quality Problems
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has brought sweeping changes to the telecommunications industry.
Consumers have used services such as Vonage and Skype to lower telephone bills and connect with loved ones around the world. Businesses have reaped far greater benefits from VoIP when they have installed IP enabled telephone systems and Hosted PBX services.
Many have redesigned their operations around the use of VoIP reducing personnel, office space and overhead while improving customer service.
Not every VoIP implementation is a success story, though. VoIP problems such as dropped calls and garbled speech can be frustrating to users and counterproductive to business.
These voice quality problems can be the result of many factors including insufficient Internet speed, poor ISP service, wiring, viruses, improper voice packet prioritization and many more. Solving these issues can seem difficult especially if they are intermittent.
What Not to Do
Do not start changing settings and equipment without a plan. VoIP issues can be caused by dozens of factors including the Internet Service Provider (ISP). Potential trouble areas must be systematically eliminated.
Do not give up on VoIP and its many benefits. Your problem can be fixed.
How to Find the Source of VoIP Problems
VoIP quality problems are caused by a lack of available bandwidth at the time that it is needed. Does this mean purchasing more bandwidth from the ISP will solve the problem? Maybe, but more than likely, no. It means that if there was always enough bandwidth, there would not be any call quality trouble. It also says that the area of congestion will be indicated by packet loss and/or latency.
For packets to travel from one point on the Internet to another, they must pass through a series of routers or hops. Each router examines the destination address of the packet and chooses the next router to send the packet. This process happens about 15 to 25 times on average until the packet reaches its destination on the Internet.
Each router is limited on how much data it can send to the next or throughput. Throughput on an IP connection is determined by physical bandwidth, errors and central processing unit (cpu) capacity.
If errors are occurring, then throughput is lowered by retransmission of packets or by the equipment automatically lowering speeds to achieve more reliable communication. When more packets must pass through a point than throughput will allow, the packets are placed into a queue waiting their turn causing latency. If the queue gets full, packets are dropped causing packet loss.
Finding areas of packet loss and latency will narrow down the source of VoIP trouble. Use a packet loss and delay test tool to find these areas. Here is a link to a free packet loss and delay test tool. If your problem is intermittent, have the tool monitor your IP address for several days. You can check the report in progress at any time.
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