As a Voice over IP provider, one of the most common questions we hear is,
“What kind of call quality can we expect with VoIP?”
While it may seem a simple enough question (and a good one to ask), the answer is “it depends”. There are several factors which contribute to the quality of a VoIP call. Keep reading to learn more.
Understanding VoIP Quality of Service
The expectation in the old telecom world was your phones “just worked” (it wasn’t true, but that was what people remember). The reason people ask that question today is that most people have experienced bad voice quality on VoIP systems.
All of the large, national vendors want to deliver their VoIP service over the open internet. The problem is the open internet has no quality controls or protections for your data (that what a VoIP call is… voice turned into data), so your precious voice call is lumped together with the Kids homework, Netflix, Facebook, and all the “bandwidth hogs” that can clog up the internet once you get outside of your business’ 4 walls.
The key to quality is the ability to manage and control the bandwidth pollution, and that’s where private services like Metro Ethernet come in.
In order to better understand how VoIP quality over Metro Ethernet compares to other internet access services, it’s important to first understand how VoIP quality of service works in general.
As we’ve discussed above, there are quality issues associated with VoIP such as jitter, delay, and echo. These are issues which regularly arise due to poor architecture. At the heart of these architectural symptoms lie two predominant causes:
- Call Routing
- Bandwidth
1. Call Routing
The vast majority of Hosted PBX and VoIP services utilize the public internet to route calls. Put simply, once the call leaves your physical office over whatever internet connection you have (Cable, DSL, T1, Metro Ethernet), it hops around the internet until it arrives at its destination.
As you might imagine, this can be problematic because nobody has control of the path the call is taking. Additionally, the very next call placed usually takes a completely different path. Calls traversing the public internet are extremely difficult to troubleshoot, especially given the vast number of different providers and networks on the net.
2. Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the other major contributor to call quality issues. In many instances, businesses implement VoIP using their existing internet connection without fully understanding what impact the service will have.
The existing internet connection was supporting the day-to-day data needs of the business prior to adding VoIP. Voice over IP requires at least 100k per call in both directions (upload and download). If a company is making/taking multiple calls at once (concurrent calling), the demand on the bandwidth increases exponentially.
VoIP Quality of Service over Metro Ethernet
Utilizing a metro Ethernet connection solves the bandwidth problem as metro Ethernet offers high-speed, reliable, bidirectional bandwidth. Many calls can be made concurrently while still having plenty of bandwidth in reserve for regular data demands.
The call routing issue, however, still remains, which is why it’s possible to use a metro Ethernet connection, yet still have VoIP call quality issues.
The only solution to remedy this issue and guarantee call quality is to have the metro Ethernet connection supplied by the VoIP provider. This direct connection offers control at both ends of the circuit. This control is what allows companies like N2Net the ability to guarantee call quality over metro Ethernet.
Partner with VoIP Experts
Unlike other VoIP providers, N2Net is unique in that they’re a VoIP AND Internet Service Provider. This unique marriage of technologies allows N2Net the ability to directly connect clients via metro ethernet to their VoIP network. This ideal VoIP architecture means clients receive guaranteed call quality over their metro Ethernet connections. Contact an N2Net VoIP specialist today to learn more about how you can leverage your metro ethernet connection for VoIP and other applications.
