For VOIP I was thinking a separate broadband line

[Page]

What type of speeds

Should I be looking at to make this feasible and sensible

(Waiting for you voipfone - lol)

 

[MozzComm]

voipfone will no doubt be along shortly!!

for me though, im scepticle about voip and unwilling to use it myself.

heard to many horror stories, but hey if it works for you!

 

[Page]

Well I had a play and it did not do it for me but was told that what really made it work was having a dedicated line

What we currently do is have a voip number forward to an BT something - essentially an extra number on the same line about £2 a month - and get a different ring tone

This has worked well for one purpose

But now looking again because I am thinking of a virtual exchange

 

[FrancisC]

Hi Page,

Have you tried comparing offers/quotes from VOIP system/service suppliers? That way you can have a good look at what's currently out there and, hey, try & get a better offer out of it?

We offer a similar service and have 3-4 VOIP suppliers IF you're interested

Cheers,

Francis

 

[DoveComputers]

Hi Page,

We started using VOIP on our existing broadband line with Gradwell six years ago. We found through experience, that a separate broadband line (Different ISP to the 1st line for redundancy too) and router works best. We don't have any of the teething problems we experienced since moving the VOIP to it's own line.

Plus you get all the benefits of a virtual PBX system without the expense.

Hope this helps.

 

[KM-Tiger]

What type of speeds

Should I be looking at to make this feasible and sensible

The key thing here will be the maximum number of simultaneous calls required. You'll have to guess as a starting point. 2? 6? 16?

 

[Posilan]

What type of speeds

Should I be looking at to make this feasible and sensible

(Waiting for you voipfone - lol)

It may be cheaper for you to get a decent router (such as a Draytek Vigor 2820) which supports proper QoS and packet prioritisation so VOIP traffic gets priority over other stuff.

Steve

 

[DoveComputers]

It may be cheaper for you to get a decent router (such as a Draytek Vigor 2820) which supports proper QoS and packet prioritisation so VOIP traffic gets priority over other stuff.

Steve

Hi,

We found the Draytek 2820 and 2830 dual WAN functionality doesn't work well with VOIP. It was one of the reasons, we separated it into two Drayteks instead.

 

[Posilan]

Hi,

We found the Draytek 2820 and 2830 dual WAN functionality doesn't work well with VOIP. It was one of the reasons, we separated it into two Drayteks instead.

We normally use a linux box to control dual wan if needed so not any experience of that - it was more the QoS that I was recommending them for as an alternate to a second line.

Steve

 

[cjd]

You only really need two lines if you need to make a few simultaneous calls and use the internet all at once. Is it just for you or have you staff?

 

[Jonathan Power]

VOIP works if you have good connectivity, the more people connected to a line/area, the worse the connection is.

therefore you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face! unless you are in Central london, where you will then get equal access i.e instead of your connection halving for both, it'll be split amongst millions.. i'd suggest tring a better voip phone/headset first so as not to unnecessarily commit your business

 

[leemason]

Because voice traffic goes both up and downstream the critical factor in a VoIP line is the upstream bandwidth. It's all very well getting 8Mb downstream but if your upstream is only 400Kb then that will limit the number of concurrent calls.

As has been mentioned a few times the number of concurrent calls will also be a deciding factor.

 

[Page]

We actually have Vigour 2820 but if I jump to VOIP it has to work right or forget it

Not interested in changing my account right now - to much work for the amount we will use it in the short run

It would not be committing our business just another notch improvement - we would still have BT line in for normal phone and broadband - just not forwarding current VOIP numbers to the BT one

i was looking at using a 3 Mi-Fi which is giving us 1.8 down and 1.2 up and just for this purpose

We would rarely have more than 2 calls going at once - but might sometimes have more

I am not sure how many simultaneous calls this bandwidth would give us - maybe that should be the angle that I am asking the question from

 

[Posilan]

i was looking at using a 3 Mi-Fi which is giving us 1.8 down and 1.2 up and just for this purpose

I would strongly advise against this for voip - 3G is not reliable enough for VOIP both in terms of connection quality and latency.

Steve

 

[Posilan]

I am not sure how many simultaneous calls this bandwidth would give us - maybe that should be the angle that I am asking the question from

Depending on which CODEC you use, if you budget for 100kbps each way per simultaneous call, you won't go far wrong.

The actual usage is generally more like 64kbps per channel, but allowing 100kbps will give you room for manoeuvre and allow for overheads especially when calculating for smaller numbers of simultaneous calls.

Steve

 

[Page]

I would strongly advise against this for voip - 3G is not reliable enough for VOIP both in terms of connection quality and latency.

Steve

Wow - always another blooming hurdle

Darn but thanks

Back to the drawing board

 

[leemason]

The problem with 3G is that although on speed tests you will get acceptable upstream bandwidth for voice calls you also need to add latency into this. 3G has much longer latency (so the round trip delay for voice packets will be longer) and jitter is greater (the difference between how long it takes different network packets to get from end to end varies a lot). So don't go for 3G for office VoIP services.

On the other side Vigor are actually pretty good routers for VoIP traffic as most models provide a good level of traffic prioritisation which can be used for VoIP traffic.

 

[AllThingsVoice]

Any Internet routing of voice and its success absolutely depends on the connection itself, depending on the type of Internet connection you have will determine how to go about laying voice traffic over it. All requests for voice traffic need to be consulted upon singularly as every user/business will have varying factors.

Once I have understood the number of users you have in total, along with how many maximum concurrent calls (inbound AND outbound), the Internet connection you have now, your postcode, any specific features you may need etc will mean a specific recommendation can be made for you.

If you wish me to help you PM me and we can look at how to solve what you require