NO TWO VT BUSINESS PHONE NETWORKS ARE THE SAME: PART 2

In our first article on VT Business Phone Networks we went over some of the core features in how networks from one location to another are not always equal. Here are some further points about how networks affect your phone systems.

 

 

WAN’s Affect Your Virtual PBX

The WAN or wide area network consists of your internet connection and any other locations that have dedicated lines to your current location. This can get tricky trying to make your Virtual PBX to work across multiple locations. The bigger challenge is now to provide a dedicated stable connection to the outside world.

 

The bottleneck in many business networks is the wide area network circuits. They typically run from 1.5MB to 100MB. With this type of setup, it’s easy to identify the bottleneck. LAN’s on the other hand run at speeds of 100MB to 1GB. The good thing for many business owners is the price of internet service is coming down and the speeds are going up. Many of these data circuits are now coming with a quality of service (QoS) rules already enabled which helps to prioritize voice traffic.

 

If you have a data circuit that has the quality of service and it meets the VoIP standards of latency, packet loss and jitter. Your latency should be no more thatn 120 milliseconds, packet loss should be less than 1% and the jitter requirements should be no more than 40 milliseconds. These requirements when met give you a good connection for Virtual PBX.

 

What kind of Routers

There are many brands of routers on the market today that you can purchase and plug into your network. This doesn’t mean they are suited for VoIP. There really are three kinds of routers.

1. Routers that are incapable of handling voice.

2. Routers that are capable of handling voice.

3. Routers that can be made capable of handling voice.

 

If you router is designed to handle VoIP (Voice) and it is programmed correctly then in many cases it can enhance the quality of the voice. These routers typically are not your off the shelve consumer grade routers. On the other hand, a bad router is the number one source of VoIP problems. Older routers were not designed to handle the voice traffic and they tend to wreak havoc with your voice network. If your router is one to two years old you may be able to run a firmware update to bring it up to code to handle voice. This is not a guarantee though.

 

The second most common problem with routers is improper programming to handle voice. There are dozens of parameters that have to be set to make your voice network work flawlessly. This takes a trained professional that has experience in working with routers, networks and VoIP systems. Many IT professionals will claim that they have experience in programming voice networks, but that is just not the case that we see on a regular basis. Most of their training is for data networks and not voice.

 

If you are stuck and having problems with your voice network, phones or calling plans, give us a call! 802-296-6800