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March 18, 2009
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	Call Quality Issues

Article Because we are a VoIP telephone company the quality of your telephone service with us is 100% reliant on having a solid and reliable internet connection.

There are several things that can cause problems with communications on a broadband Circuit. Some of them might be local such as a computer on your network that is infected with malware, or running peer-to-peer file sharing software such as Bit Torrent, Kazaa, Limeware, etc., and these applications take 100% of the available bandwidth and cause VoIP to suffer. Some problems can be caused by poor data throughput between you and your ISP due to a problem with the broadband connection itself.

We have three possible courses of action available:

1. Find the bandwidth drain on your Local Area Network and solve it.
2. Install DrayTek modem/router to replace your current router and throttle the bad bandwidth.
3. Separate voice and data with a separate broadband circuit. <<< This is the best option

There are no other possible causes or courses of action we can look into.

Option 1:
Please verify that all computers on the network have all the required updates and current Virus and spyware protection. Also please verify that there are no users on the network downloading streaming media such Youtube video or using peer-to-peer file sharing programs such as Limewire or Bit Torrent as these will also cause network conditions that adversely affect bandwidth availability on the network. One method we use for determining if one or more computers on the network have been infected with a virus or spyware that is over taxing the bandwidth available on the network is to turn off all the workstations and test to see if the conditions that you are experiencing with the phones continue. If the phones operate as expected with all workstations powered down we than turn on each computer one at a time, allowing several minutes for the computer to fully boot, and then test again to see if the condition returns. Repeating this process with each computer can identify a computer on the network that has been compromised with malware.
If you would like us to send one of our Technicians to isolate and clean Malware from a computer on your network, the charge for this service is $95 Per hour with a 1 hour minimum.

Option 2:
We can replace your existing router/firewall with one that better supports QOS for VoIP.
We can install a DrayTek router for $325 which would replace both the existing modem and the router you currently have on your network.
It's advantage is that it offers bandwidth throttling to ensure the VoIP traffic gets priority over data requests on the circuit.

Option 3:
The best fix for the problem that you are experiencing is to separate the data from the voice on your network.
For approx $50/month (depending on the provider), you may be able to get a separate DSL circuit and use one circuit for data and one for voice.
This would insure that data communications never effect the quality of your voice communications.

We will do everything in our power to provide good quality service for your company.

Please let us know if you would like to proceed with either of these courses of action.

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Created On:

07 Apr 2009 8:15 PM