Background Information
Digital (VoIP) phone services require high speed, low latency, internet.
The inbound and outbound audio, are streamed in real time. And unlike music and movies, live conversations cannot be buffered.
So if there are any performance issues with your internet, you may experience audio quality issues with a phone call.
This is less common these days, due to the very high internet speeds now available. But often the upload speed is much lower, and can still become a bottleneck, especially if your network has any bandwidth intensive apps or devices that may hog upload speed (see list of examples in section 4 below).
If you do experience audio quality issues, it is usually on the outbound (upload) channel. Your audio may sound like a robotic voice, or parts of the voice drop out completely, or the call may simply drop entirely during a conversation.
NOTE REGARDING SPEED TESTS: Running a speed test is a synthetic test, and will not show your actual available speed, but rather your maximum (ideal) speed. Internet Providers prioritize speed tests, and use caching, so the results are usually much better than you will achieve with real world activity. Pay particular attention to the UPLOAD speed rather than the DOWNLOAD speed. Upload speed is usually much slower, and can be a limiting factor to call quality, especially outbound audio.
Try the following suggestions to resolve most call quality issues.
1. Reboot your network equipment, including modem, router, switches, etc. Sometimes that is all that is necessary. But if you need to frequently reboot (more than once per 30 days), then you may need to replace one of your network devices.
Another possibility is if rebooting your network briefly resolves issue, but then it quickly resumes within 60 minutes or so, or maybe at the same time the next day, or the same day next week, then there may be some app or device that is causing your network to become congested. Rebooting router temporarily kicks the app or device offline, but then it resumes shortly after router reboots, or resumes at a scheduled time. Try finding the device or app and throttling it. Examples are online backups, cloud drive syncing, data base updating, users logging into network remotely, video conferencing, security cameras, etc. See item 5 for more details.
3. Reboot your phone equipment, including adapters, phones, cordless base stations, phone system pbx, etc. This is less likely to be an issue, since these devices can often run for months or years at a time without a reboot. But its a simple thing to try, just in case. And again, if any device requires a frequent reboot, it may be time to replace that device.
4. Check with your internet provider, to see if they are experiencing any performance issues, either on their network, or with your particular connection. This type of internet provider issue is often resolved by the time you contact them. But if it becomes a frequent problem, you may need to have them send a technician to check for things like bad cables, corroded connectors, signal boost errors, crowded nodes, or even neighbors who are hogging too much bandwidth. We usually recommend using your own modem and router, instead of the ones provided by internet service. Their devices are often reused over and over, and are not always very reliable. By using your own devices, you can ensure that they are new and in good shape.
You can check website like www.downdetector.com to see if anyone else is currently reporting issues with your internet provider.
5. [This is a VERY common cause of audio quality issues.] Check for bandwidth hogging apps or devices on your network. This can be a bit tricky to track down, if you are not methodical. So take time to trace the problem, and you'll save time and frustration in the long run. First, try to think of anything new that has been added to your network, or installed on any PCs recently... and don't forget phones and tablets. Be sure to ask family and coworkers, but sometimes you have to actually go check for yourself. We often see situations where someone has installed something new, but didn't think it was important to mention it. See below, a list of common bandwidth hogs to look out for...
- Online Backup (carbonite, glacier, etc)
- Cloud Drives (dropbox, onedrive, googledrive, etc)
- Security Cameras (especially if they have cloud storage or remote monitoring)
- Media Streaming (mostly video services, but even music can be a problem with multiple users)
- Remote Desktop Access (users accessing their PC or network from home)
- VPN (if you connect to, or from, a VPN, or through a VPN service)
- Cloud Services or Databases (anything that is contstancly syncing multiple users or locations)
- Gaming (users playing online games)
- Viruses and Malware (try powering down slow PCs to see if call quality improves)
- Misconfigured routers or firewalls, or overloaded networks
- Old equipment, old switches, routers, etc. Make sure everything is Gigabit rated (1000mbps), not older 10 or 100mbps.
Those are just a few of the most common culprits.
Generally, anything that ties up too much bandwidth, especially upload bandwidth, need to be THROTTLED or SCHEDULED to run after hours.
Let us know if you have questions about particular apps or devices. We can't provide too much network diagnostics, but we can try to point you in the right direction.
voiSip Team
