Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system is a great option for your business if you want to cut some costs and add flexibility for your remote and office workers. However, it is important to be aware that your call quality relies entirely on your internet connection and local network. This means if your network is struggling, your calls will too. So how do you make sure everything remains clear and reliable as your team goes about their daily tasks?
What Is VoIP Monitoring?
VoIP monitoring is the process of tracking and analysing the performance of your system to ensure smooth, crystal-clear, and reliable voice communication. When you make a call using VoIP, your voice is converted into a digitised stream of data packets. These packets travel across the internet to the person on the other line. If you actively monitor your network conditions, you can identify any issues and resolve them before they start dropping calls or frustrating your customers.
What Causes Poor Audio Quality On Calls?
To understand network health, you need to know what goes wrong when calls sound poor. Here are a few things to watch for:
- Latency: If latency is too high, you’ll notice an unnatural conversational delay, which means that people end up talking over each other on the phone.
- Jitter: When data packets arrive in the wrong order, the audio becomes choppy, uneven, or robotic. This often happens when your network is busy with other traffic.
- Packet loss: Sometimes, parts of the call fail to reach the recipient altogether. This results in missing syllables or short dropouts during the conversation, which can make it incredibly hard to follow the discussion.
Why Do Businesses Need To Monitor VoIP System Health?
We all know that we can’t fix something we aren’t aware needs fixing. That is why it is so important for businesses to monitor the health of their VoIP system. Doing so, allows business owners to identify any issues, discover the root cause and take proactive measures to keep their VoIP system in good health.
Not checking on these systems can result in a bunch of dropped calls and communication glitches. Consequently, this will severely affect the productivity of employees and have a negative impact on customer experience.
How Do You Test Your VoIP System Health?
A common mistake businesses make is just running a simple speed test when the office is at its quietest and assuming everything is fine when the download speed appears to be fast. The problem is that this does not accurately reflect the real performance of your VoIP network.
Test Under Real Business Pressure
If you want to get an accurate picture of your network’s health, you will have to test your system during your busiest hours. The goal is to see how the connection handles multiple calls while other employees are running file backups, uploading data, or using cloud applications. Running tests during a quiet network will only hide potential issues that will instantly surface later when your team is working on different tasks.
Consider All Other Factors
Your VoIP reliability and quality depends on a few other factors such as your local network switches, your router, the internet path, and even the physical headsets or phones your team uses. If your staff will use Wi-Fi to make calls, you need to test the wireless paths specifically. Wi-Fi can add its own unique challenges like signal interference and roaming between access points, which a wired Ethernet connection simply doesn’t have.
What Tools Can You Use To Track VoIP Health?
As mentioned, tracking VoIP health is important to ensure there aren’t any problems with your system and to keep your VoIP system in the best shape possible. There are a few tools you can use to monitor your VoIP system, including:
- VoIPmonitor: This is an open-source tool dedicated to tracking jitter and packet loss. It’s highly customisable and specifically designed to assess VoIP performance at a detailed level.
- SolarWinds VoIP & Network Quality Manager: This software offers live alerts so you can troubleshoot issues quickly. If you have a larger business across multiple office locations, it is highly beneficial to you.
- Dotcom-Monitor: Great for tracking server performance and monitoring call quality. It looks at inbound call routing, tracks the success of outgoing calls, and checks the availability of your voicemail systems.
- ThousandEyes: A tool that offers detailed reporting and analytical capabilities, along with call simulation features to test your network before issues come up.
Track The Mean Opinion Score (MOS)
Many of these tools will provide a Mean Opinion Score, usually referred to as MOS. This is a subjective measure of call quality rated on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is poor and 5 is excellent. It is a good way to predict the overall quality of your calls and notice negative trends early.
How Do You Fix Poor VoIP Call Quality?
Once you start monitoring your system, you might realise that your network needs a few adjustments to deliver crystal-clear audio. Here are a few steps you can take to improve your call quality.
Prioritise Voice Traffic With QoS
Quality of Service (QoS) is a feature available within network switches and routers that allows you to prioritise voice traffic. When multiple users are sending emails, watching videos, and searching the internet, it takes up a lot of bandwidth. If you set up a QoS policy, you ensure your VoIP calls take priority over other network activities.
Prepare A Backup Connection
Having a backup internet circuit or a mobile 4G/5G router can come in handy. However, a backup is only useful if you’ve actually tested voice calls over it beforehand. You need to make sure that calls recover properly, and that inbound callers can still reach your team during a primary broadband failure.
Keep Your Business Talking Clearly
Maintaining a healthy VoIP system is all about testing and taking action as quickly as possible. When you understand what to look out for, you can use the right tools to test your network under real working conditions to determine what issues you must resolve. When you look after your VoIP system’s health, you can finally create a work environment with unified communications.
