Categorized | VoIP Q&A

3 Comments For This Post

1. GTB Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 5:52 pm

   The question is not truely answerable as asked.
   All phone carriers, regardless of provider, who use the public Internet for transport cannot assure voice Quality of Service (QoS) because QoS demands priority for voice packets over data packets. Failure to provide QoS will result in at best unpredictible voice quality. The public Internet does NOT provide packet priority for Voice packets and cannot assure you QoS.
   Many people incorrectly believe that if they increase their broadband capacity they will overcome the QoS issue. This will not, in and of itself, do this.
   A single G.711 codex (the highest quality codex), duplex call will demand up to 175 Kbps. People with a 768 Kbps in theory have more than sufficient capacity for this application. However, voice quality varries markedly. Increasing the Internet speed to 3,000 Kbps for this 175 Kbps demand is what people will try to do, as they incorrectly feel that broadband speed is the problem. Often they see little to no quality improvement. The reasons they see little to no improvement is failure to provide QoS both within the LAN, at the LAN’s switches and routers, and across the Internet. Simple calculations also suggest beefing up to a 10,000 Kbps Internet speed without addressing QoS just will not resolve the matter.
   Please learn about QoS, its implications, and how to address them. Do not believe the providers of voice transport who use the Internet as the carrier. They cannot assure QoS over the internet despite their claims to the contrary.
   This is not to state that VoIP is not a deployable or prudent technology. Properly done in the appropriate applications, VoIP can be cost effective. However the home grade carriers of the type you discuss just do not fall into such a classification.

2. Anonymous Says:
   July 1st, 2009 at 11:42 pm

   You dont need much, 512mbit will be fine, but will slow download background internet usage.
   It also depends on which programme you are using.
   Skype uses alot of bandwidth, Teamspeak and Ventrillo do not use as much.
   A broadband connection is reccomended and almost neccasary though.

3. the answerer Says:
   July 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 am

   2MB is reccomended mimimum, although at least 4MB is very good.