VoIP is an excellent business communication solution, but implementing it can be complicated. It’s important to take the time to plan your project from start to finish.
Start with a provider who understands your unique communication needs and can translate them into the right VoIP options. Next, prioritize your bandwidth. Ensure your network can handle the additional voice traffic load, and consider upgrading to a wired connection.
Prioritize Bandwidth
VoIP is a popular option for remote work and allows employees to collaborate regardless of location. However, ensuring the network has sufficient speed and capacity for the technology to function properly is essential. Here are a couple of suggestions to get you started when implementing VoIP. Prioritize bandwidth for voice traffic to minimize latency and improve call quality. This can be accomplished by enabling quality of service on your router and setting up network rules prioritizing specific data types. Ideally, your router will use trust mode to identify DSCP packets as VoIP and set them to strict priority.
Additionally, ensuring that your network is properly secured will help prevent ghost calls, which occur when users pick up the phone only to find the line has gone dead. Using strong passwords and training your team to look for phishing attempts through VoIP can reduce these attacks. Also, consider upgrading to a PoE network switch that provides desk phones with data and power. This reduces clutter on the desk and eliminates the need for extra cords.
Utilize a Wired Network
The business-class VoIP features you expect from your provider, like visual voicemail, conference calling, and virtual numbers, require a network capable of handling the additional traffic. This means that your Internet connection needs to be fast enough and that your wired LAN has adequate bandwidth and capacity for the expected usage of your VoIP system.
If you need help determining whether your network is up to the task, have a professional assess it. This person (or team) will examine general conditions, the age of your equipment, and the need for upgrades or replacements.
They will also ensure that your router offers high performance for all types of data traffic so you can prioritize voice traffic over other data. This helps to ensure that your calls are free from jitter, echo, and latency, which can all degrade call quality. A good jitter score is less than 50 milliseconds. Latency is the time it takes for data packets to reach their destination and should be under 30 milliseconds.
Ensure Network Security
VoIP offers features like visual voicemail, conference calling, call transfer, unified messaging, and mobile apps that help businesses stay competitive and present a professional image to customers. However, successfully adopting these systems depends on a strong foundation—the company’s network infrastructure.
This includes ensuring that bandwidth is sufficient to support the additional data traffic of VoIP phone calls. That hardware can process the necessary data and support future growth, and utilizing a wired network’s also a good idea, as WiFi connections can interfere with signal strength and quality and may cause dropped calls.
Finally, it’s a good idea to implement firewalls and consistent network monitoring. This helps protect against threats such as DDoS attacks, which occur when hackers flood servers and networks with more data or connection requests than they can handle. This results in degraded conversation quality and reduced availability. It’s also essential to ensure network security, prioritizing voice traffic over other kinds of data through quality service settings.
Reduce Latency
Before launching a new VoIP system, ensure it works properly by testing the network, PBX, and phones. Ensure each is connected, can hear you clearly, and has no jitters or echoes. Also, check that your website and other online platforms are updated with the correct business phone number to ensure callers get the right company information.
The quality of a VoIP call depends on the speed, bandwidth, and capacity of a business’s network. A slow network can cause lags or dropped calls, which may result in frustrated customers and poor online reviews.
A VoIP system must prioritize voice traffic over other data protocols, so it’s important to have sufficient network speed and capacity. Also, a wired network is best for VoIP because of the interference and signal strength issues that can impact WiFi connections. Lastly, the network must be secured from hacking threats interfering with VoIP call quality.
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