10 Ways To Improve VoIP Quality

Many people ask if the quality of VoIP connections is the same as plain old telephony. When in luck, you hardly hear the difference. If you’re not, there are a few things you could do to improve your connection.

1. Use hardware phones rather than softphones.

Get yourself a real VoIP telephone or Analogue Telephone Adapter (ATA, a device that connects POTS telephones to a VoIP service). Such a device doesn’t have to share it resources with a PC since it operates on its own.

2. Get a headset or USB handset.

If you decide to stay with a softphone, get a headset or USB handset. You will still need your computer but it eliminates background noise since the microphone is closer to the mouth. And with sound only coming from the tiny speaker you’ll likely have less echoing.

3. Get a stable broadband connection.

Yep, you’ll need broadband and it needs to be good. Not only plenty of bandwidth, but also good latency. When you see ping values going up en down, you’re probably in trouble.

4. Get the right codec.

Some codecs are better in quality but require more bandwidth. Using some high-quality codec with too little bandwidth will bring you poorer performance. Calculate how much bandwidth you need with the bandwidth calculator.

5. Get the best upload you can.

Some Internet connections are asymmetric (like ADSL). Most of the time this means that you’ll have plenty of download speed but not too much upload. The better the upload speed, the better the codec you can use.

6. Don’t hog your connection.

Sharing your connection with other bandwidth consuming software like P2P or streaming media will leave less bandwidth for your talking. Turn them off if you are experiencing stutter or otherwise bad connection.

7. Tune your audio settings.

Take some time to tune your audio settings. Especially input levels for the microphone are important. Make them not too loud but also not to weak. Try Skype’s echo service to hear yourself back and decide if settings are right.

8. Use QoS

QoS (Quality Of Service) gives priority to certain types of traffic. Sometimes it’s already built in your router or operating system, or you can build one yourself.

9. Use echo cancellation

If your software supports it, turn on echo cancellation. It’s a software algorithm that prevents you from hearing yourself back. Use this if you are not able to use a headset.

10. Find a quiet environment to talk.

This one goes for every conversation. Find a nice and quiet place to talk so all kind of background noise won’t distract or use your precious bandwidth. Most codecs are optimized for speech so other types of noise will not compress as well as speech.


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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 5:23 pm and is filed under VOIP Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “10 Ways To Improve VoIP Quality”

  1. bitácora de sysnetworks » 10 formas de mejorar la calidad de la VoIP

    10:18 am
    August 17th, 2006

    [...] En VoipRelay.com postean un artículo donde podemos leer 10 maneras de mejorar nuestras conexiones de telefonía sobre redes IP. Entre ellas yo destacaría usas codecs acordes a nuestra conexión, usar un teléfono IP hardware y configurar calidad de servicio en nuestra conexión. Con estas tres sencillas reglas veremos una significativa mejora en nuestras conversaciones. [...]

  2. Roy King

    7:57 pm
    November 4th, 2007

    A VoIP Solution is undoubtledly the wave for the future to catch onto. I believe that the majority of possible future user’s are somewhat concerned with some advantages that a VoIP phone system presently offers.
    For a VoIP solution to reach the next level, I believe that infrastructure engineers must converge software technology that will allow end user’s to seamlessly switch back temporary to a POTS system when either a decrease in quality of service is noticed or a slow Internet connection has resided. With availabilty to a temporary back-up POTS line, the end user will have the option to activate this service and enjoy the benefits a VoIP solution offers. Finally, a VoIP Phone system will now be able to provide immediate access to 911 emergency service that is a standard on POTS.

  3. Steve Evans

    11:14 pm
    January 19th, 2008

    If you have a family network and the kids play games a lot and are active on the web in other ways as well, I would definately recommend a Quality of Service router. It has made all the difference to my use of Skype.

    You could of course just shout at them to get them to stop playing in order to make a phone call. It won’t make you exactly popular though !

 

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