VoIP Health Check

What is VoIP?

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) converts analogue voice calls into packets of data. These packets travel in the same way as any other type of data, like email or text messages, over the public Internet and/or any private Internet Protocol (IP) network. Using a VoIP service, you can call landlines or mobile phones. You can also call computer-to-computer, with both parties speaking into a microphone and listening through computer speakers or headsets.

The impact of poor VoIP connection

A bad VoIP connection will compromise call quality and ultimately impact the communication between your team, colleagues, clients or customers. A poor internet service or limited internet speed, means you won’t be able to maintain multiple lines on the network. This in turn results in delay, as customers spend more time waiting in a queue. Metrics show that sales teams can lose up to 60% of their customers if their call isn’t answered in less than a minute – ideally it should be 30 seconds or less.

What are the symptoms of a poor VoIP connection?

If your call quality is less than perfect with intermittent or unintelligible speech, if it sounds like you are talking into a drainpipe or sounding like a Dalek, if you hear your own voice echoing back at you during a conversation; it is likely there are issues with the network/ISP connection.

How can a VoIP Health Check help?

While VoIP is an essential component of enterprise communications, calls through VoIP can be difficult to manage and troubleshoot. Packet loss, jitter and VoIP latency are the three elements that most influence call quality. Legacy VoIP monitoring systems rely on Call Detail Records (CDRs), and at best, packet capture will only highlight issues after something has already gone wrong. This reactive approach also provides little or no visibility across multiple networks. Legacy VoIP monitoring software struggles even more as enterprises migrate to cloud-based UC solutions. VoIP data packets are especially susceptible to underlying network conditions that most VoIP monitoring software can’t detect.

So, a stable and capable VoIP connection is important for every business. A VoIP Health Check helps you review the overall health of your network/ISP connection. It also enables you to determine whether the call traffic in your existing phone system is high enough to warrant an upgrade to your office network. If VoIP test results indicate certain properties such as bandwidth, jitter or latency falling short of the minimum requirements, it could mean that it’s time to switch your internet service provider, or look into more powerful VoIP systems that can more efficiently meet your business requirements.

What is the VoIP Health Check process?

Our engineer…