VoIP or Voice-over-IP has replaced telephone “land-lines” in many businesses today due to ease of use, added features, and lowered costs.  Yet many things can cause call quality to degrade that are not well understood.

First of all, VoIP requires a good quality Internet connection – an asymmetric DSL connection to a small business, which is common, is usually not enough to run multiple phone lines without having some quality issues in the slower direction.   A T1 line, symmetrical business quality DSL, or higher speed cable modem is best for overall voice quality.

Secondly, VoIP connections can suffer call quality issues if there is no QoS or “Quality of Service” priority scheme built into the networking equipment used.  If voice is not prioritized over data, someone downloading a huge file in the next room or playing YouTube videos can cause a call to become very degraded or even dropped.

When choosing an Internet service provider, be sure to tell them that you plan to operate VoIP so that they give you a service that is designed for voice – otherwise, you may have issues such as packet loss that can also create gaps in the speech that you hear.

Choosing good VoIP phones is also critical to good quality and service, as well-designed phones have many features designed to make the overall VoIP experience as close to land line quality as possible. A good phone will have a good quality echo cancellation algorithm built into the chipset used, and will have a well designed headset with additional noise reduction features.  Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, and Shoretel all have superior products used by many businesses today.  Analog telephone adapter technology has also come a long way in the past several years – which means you can have a VoIP system using your old phones by simply buying boxes from Dlink, Linksys/Cisco or any number of other vendors and simply plugging them in.

A solid infrastructure built using at least cat5 Ethernet cabling is also a prerequisite for any business-class VoIP deployment.   If your infrastructure is not solid, or cabling is not run properly, high levels of interference or packet loss can cause your calls to be spotty or even inaudible.

The right structured cabling installers will be more than happy to do a detailed analysis of your network infrastructure and make cost effective yet useful recommendations for enhancements that will help keep your new VoIP system running efficiently.  Why not call them today?

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Sophisticated networking equipment was once only found in large companies, while small companies shared a dial-up modem to access the Internet or didn’t access the Internet at all.   File sharing between computers was performed by “sneaker-net”; walking around with discs from computer to computer.

Today’s economy demands efficiency for success, and the Internet has become a requirement for doing business at any level.   This has left many small businesses struggling to use complex equipment designed for much larger businesses –or trying to use cheap equipment with low quality standards and no service or maintenance contracts.

Many of the traditional networking companies have recognized this problem, and are now offering service packages customized to the needs of small business, or easy-to-set up and provision equipment with higher quality standards and more comprehensive installation instructions.

Cisco’s Small Business Technology Group (formerly Linksys) offers a wide variety of such products with comprehensive service packages so that small business owners have a place to turn to if or when things go wrong.   Texas based Epygi offers a small business IPPBX that accommodates legacy phones and can be installed within 30 minutes of opening the box.

No matter which path you choose – better service packages or simpler equipment – any network is only going to be as reliable as its infrastructure.  If your small business is planning to invest in some great SMB networking products – make sure they are running on the very best cable and wiring before paying big bucks for a service package!  Call a professional team of network cabling installers to review your infrastructure, and you will save yourself a lot of headaches.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention http://www.intsysinst.com as the original source).

Today’s business climate is motivating most business owners and managers to find new and innovative ways to cut costs – hence VoIP or voice-over-IP is becoming very popular.  But this leads to Capex spending; and budgets are just not there unless the ROI happens in short order.

Enter SIP trunking, which is a highly popular way of getting the benefits of lowered phone bills with minimum Capex.  SIP trunks allow voice and data to be carried over the same internal network, while allowing integration into the company’s existing phone system.  A company can purchase more sophisticated SIP or IP phones, but won’t have to upgrade immediately in order to get the cost benefits provided by SIP trunking.  With SIP trunking, the call is handled as little as possible by traditional telephone wires with their associated high costs.

SIP or “session-initiation-protocol” is a protocol which specifies signaling standards for IP telephony – it is very similar to web languages so also allows greater integration of telephony with web services such as click-to-talk. It is now the preferred protocol for IP telephony used.

A wide variety of SIP trunking providers have popped up to meet this growing demand – several of which are Broadvox, Bandwidth.com, and Etherspeak.  Charges for SIP trunking are often a fraction of the cost of a PSTN (public switched telephone network) carrier!

Central to the operation of a SIP trunked system is the IPPBX, or Internet Protocol PBX system.  Some IPPBXs such as the small business versions offered by Epygi have analog connections as well as digital connections – which means businesses can use their older analog phones and don’t have to buy all ATAs (analog telephone adapters that allow old phones to be used with IP telephony) or newer SIP phones.   This allows upgrades to happen more slowly, to keep finance people happy.

IPPBXs also offer rich feature sets such as music on hold, menu-driven call routing, call screening, auto-attendants, etc at a fraction of the cost of a traditional PBX system.  A small company that moves to a SIP trunking telephone architecture with an IPPBX not only will save money, but can achieve a big company presence with small company expenditures.

Service providers offer what is known as a “hosted” option also, which simply means the IPPBX is not located at the company premise, but in a data center or facility owned by the service provider.  This type of service provider usually contracts with a SIP trunking provider to provide the trunk, and charges the end customer for the actual IPPBX service.  One example of this type of provider is Silicon Valley based Ring Carrier.

Regardless of whether you opt for a hosted or premise based IPPBX system with SIP trunking – you WILL save money in the long run.  Typical payback periods are estimated at 6 months to 1 year.

But, the quality of your infrastructure and cabling will be critical if you opt to go with a SIP trunking solution.  It pays to call an expert structured wiring installer to come in and examine your structured cabling to see if it is up to the challenge.  If they find you need upgrades, they will provide a detailed estimate of the costs, and perform the work quickly and efficiently once you accept their proposal. They know that time is money!

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention http://www.intsysinst.com as the original source).