mixed pstn/voip?

rebelscum

Hi, we switched from PSTN to VOIP about a year ago & have had huge problems ever since calling abroad from the UK - call cut-offs, crackly line, often sounds like the caller is 'underwater'(!) Calls to the UK are mostly ok though not perfect.
Tried almost everything, replacing the various devices, separate ADSL line, standing on one leg...
I heard that VOIP call quality is not currently as good as PSTN/Analogue when calling abroad because other countries comms infrastructure is not fully optimized for VOIP just yet - can anyone else agree/confirm that?
How common is it to have a mixed PSTN/VOIP set up for business? Anyone recommend that to resolve issues calling abroad?
Thanks,

MarkK

Are you in the UK?

How many different VOIP providers have you tried?
International call quality is very dependent on the VOIP company you use, they chose the onward routing of your call.

Many companies have moved to almost all VOIP the quality should be comparable with PSTN.

Solair

rebelscum wrote: »

I heard that VOIP call quality is not currently as good as PSTN/Analogue when calling abroad because other countries comms infrastructure is not fully optimized for VOIP just yet - can anyone else agree/confirm that?
How common is it to have a mixed PSTN/VOIP set up for business? Anyone recommend that to resolve issues calling abroad?
Thanks,

Nope, that's definitely not true if you're calling anywhere in the developed world.

I use Blueface, which are one of Ireland's main VoIP providers all the time and the call quality's absolutely flawless.

You should try different VoIP providers, it sounds like the current one you are using has poor service and lousy connections abroad.

Also, are you way out in the countryside somewhere?
It's possible your DSL line's not great or your ISP has very high ping times.

VoIP doesn't actually need a blazingly fast broadband connection, anything over about 3mbit/s should more than suffice. What matters is the quality of the line and the ping times to and from the server.

Check your broadband line by going to www.pingtest.net

You might be best to ask on this forum, or on a UK forum what the best UK VoIP providers are. I'm not based there, so I'm not sure.

rebelscum

Thanks for your replies, yes we're in the UK, I'll definitely look further into the routing issue. Does the voip provider pay more for the 'best' routes? Sorry a bit of a novice regarding voip routing...
We tend to call a lot of Asian & Mediterranean countries but it can be equally bad calling U.S. or Germany.
Would consider switching voip provider but we are tied into a contract so a bit of work to be done there.

rebelscum

oh, & did a couple of pings, got an 'A' & a couple of 'B's rating with ping times of 34ms 47ms & 64ms. Jitter ranged from 1ms to 8ms to 15ms. We have about 60 voip phones on this ADSL line, would you recommend an extra line perhaps or fibre broadband?

http://www.pingtest.net/result/68399704.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/68399930.png
http://www.pingtest.net/result/68399981.png

MarkK

If you are in a contract, complain to your provider and get them to fix it.
If they can't fix it, they should allow you to cancel as they are not providing the service you are paying for.

Many of the SIP VOIP companies can be tried for free.
There are free 'test numbers' you can call to see what call quality is like.

I'm in the UK and I use:
sipgate.co.uk
voipfone.co.uk
and find them both good.

Solair

rebelscum wrote: »

Thanks for your replies, yes we're in the UK, I'll definitely look further into the routing issue. Does the voip provider pay more for the 'best' routes? Sorry a bit of a novice regarding voip routing...
We tend to call a lot of Asian & Mediterranean countries but it can be equally bad calling U.S. or Germany.
Would consider switching voip provider but we are tied into a contract so a bit of work to be done there.

Well, if the VoIP provider hasn't spent enough on its infrastructure, then yes, you'd have poor quality calls.

To be perfectly honest, if the quality isn't up to scratch, you should go after them to get the contract cancelled. If the call quality's bad and it's due to a problem on their network, I think you should be able to cancel.

It's a service / product like anything else and it would be covered under UK trading standards laws.

I actually use Blueface from multiple locations around Europe when I travel and in general (provided I have a good internet connection) my VoIP phone works absolutely perfectly.

Give a recommended and known to be good VoIP provider a try and see how you get on. Just configure it on one phone and compare it to your existing service and see how you get on.

rebelscum

yep need to look at that contract, thanks everyone for your advice. voipfone + sipgate, ta I'll look em up.

Solair

Find out if your VoIP provider has a test number itself too.

For example, on Blueface there's a series of test numbers that let you do various basic audio tests with your handset.

This is what Blueface has, but your provider would obviously have different numbers.

300 - Crazy Monkeys
301 - Echo Test
302 - TellMe (via FWD and often unavailable during US working hours)
303 - Speaking Clock
304 - Mr Roboto
305 - Music on Hold
306 - DTMF Checker (enter number and it will be read back to you)
307 - Record and Playback (records a 10 second snippet of your audio and plays it back)

Quite useful for trouble shooting.

also www.pingtest.net will give you a good idea of your own internet access quality.

rebelscum

brilliant, I'll give it a try

fbit_colin

Hi

What is your broadband up and down capacity and contention ratio?

Have you tested out of hours to see if the problem still exists on just a couple of calls?

The company that the others has mentioned Blueface has a UK office

http://uk.blueface.com/

I think though you should look at your broadband first and see if you have the capacity for the amount of simultaneous calls your company generates on average.

Regards
Colin

Mr. G

If you have 60 phones on an adsl line I would be wondering what is your download and upload speeds you are getting and connection ratios.

If its 100mb up and down constantly well then it isn't your broadband. Even if it was 24mb up and down all the time you would get away with it.

I suggest you test it with another provider. Blueface has operations in the uk. Sipgate and voipgain is also another option.

For a business, you really need quality with voip. Grey voip termination is very unreliable so if you are going wholesale go for premium rates for quality.

You should get in touch with sip trunking providers in the uk who would be cheaper than sipgate etc.

matt-dublin

your speed shouldn't be the issue, more latency. IE how long does it take a voice packet to get from the phone handset through to the SIP gateway.

crackely lines? well i would suggest this is more of a QoS issue more than anything else, whereby multimedia traffic isn't being priortised locally on your LAN and furthermore by your ISP.

there's no point is using SIP trunking in the UK if your connectivity to it won't be great. I would really only recommend doing something like this where you have the infrastructure to break the call out locally via PSTN cloud or VoIP.

What i've done here (we have thousands of sites and big financial backing to support) is place voice gateways in all of our major office with segregated Vlans and QoS across both the WAN and LAN on all sites. attached to these gateways we have local telephony provider breakout in IP/BRI format giving us a minimum of 15 channels to break out per site. at each site we've got free local/national calls and bigger sites have GSM CPNs for free/cheap mobile calls.

all the work from there on in is via our routing patterns on my call managers.

Mr. G

Each phone should get 100kbits each up and down.

An adsl line would be more than 7mb in general, if your modem is a dsl modem and not an adsl modem that's the problem. Otherwise most modems are adsl. Latency is more of a problem with satellite or wireless. Copper wires should be OK, but if your very far from the exchange etc it can be quite high.

Plug everything out and leave one computer plugged in. If you have a good speed test result connect a phone to the router and use this phone to make a call, if you get the same problem its time to talk to your voip provider.

matt-dublin

depends on what codecs you're using, g729 should bring it down to about 14kbps asynchronous per call. latency over any network is the biggest issue for call quality, satellite and wireless networks just significantly boost the issue

matt-dublin

i would also think that adsl or dsl is probably not the best internet connection to be using for voice. for business use SIP trunking i would be at least be recommending an uncontended asynchronous internet connection. 2mbps up/down with qos should be able to handle plenty of calls.

ideally you should be looking at your phone system and seeing what your peaks are and estimate what the maximum amount of concurrent calls would be.