Many
things come to mind when you say VoIP quality of service. Taken at
face value, quality of service is the level by which you enjoy
consistently good quality service from your VoIP. There are many
factors that affect your VoIP quality of service, which can either be
internal (your system) or external (your service providers).In determining quality of service, you need to use a VoIP monitoring service, like VoIP Spear, that runs tests regularly and persistently. You then look at different parameters of VoIP quality. These are mainly: MOS, latency, jitter and packet loss.
Why
is it Important to Determine your VoIP Quality of Service
You
need to know how your VoIP performs at all times of the day. This
will give you a true profile of your VoIP service, which is important
if you rely on VoIP for communications. You stay on top of your
VoIP's performance. And you can actually try to troubleshoot problems
where you can. Or, you can act immediately if issues are external and
you'd need technical assistance.
VoIP
Quality of Service or VoIP QoS?
If
you are using a modern router, you may have encountered the term VoIP
QoS. For VoIP hardware, VoIP QoS has come to refer to the
configuration settings on routers where you can give priorities to
your select application and lessen priorities for other applications.
Through
VoIP QoS, you implement an immediate fix to slow VoIP connections on
your end. By prioritizing voice applications, you allot majority of
your bandwidth to VoIP. Ideally, as you do this, you should also
deprioritize other bandwidth-heavy applications, such a gaming.
Gaming is a major bandwidth eater.
Bad
VoIP Quality of Service: Now What
You've
tested your VoIP and you've come to the conclusion that your VoIP
quality of service is lacking. What do you do?
The
first step here is to determine the cause of bad quality VoIP. It
could be that the proximity of your hardware is causing feedback that
makes your conversations inaudible. If that's the case, all you need
to do is keep them at a good distance from each other. Or, you may be
using your VoIP via a laptop that's too far. In that case, move
closer. You might also find that you have faulty or low-quality
equipment. Before buying your router, ATA, SIP phone and other VoIP
equipment, it's a good idea to read technical reviews first. If
possible, choose mid-priced to top-priced products.
Next,
see if configuring your VoIP QoS will improve your digital
communications. If all that's using up your bandwidth is VoIP, do you
see a marked improvement on how you enjoy VoIP? In cases like this,
you will want to examine your bandwidth allotment and usage. Does
your VoIP package come with too little bandwidth for your
requirements? Are there too many people in your network, such that
there's always network traffic? Here, you can consider tacking your
VoIP to a different internal network, upgrading your account or
moving to different service providers.
With
VoIP monitoring, you can know right away if you main problem is your
service provider. Are you experiencing dips in the performance of key
VoIP quality parameters even when you are not actively using your
phone service? You might need to move to a service that provides you
with consistently good service. Dips and downtimes are natural for
anything, even traditional phone services. However, these should
never be regular occurences. You need to be able to rely on your
service, especially if it's business VoIP.
