Overcoming Barriers to High-Quality Voice over IP Deployments

Deployment of VoIP is growing, partly because QoS issues have been successfully addressed. In a properly configured VoIP installation today, conversations in VoIP calls can sound as good, and sometimes better, than in circuit-switched calls.

In a VoIP system, QoS depends on how a call is set up. More than telephone equipment and server technology must be considered. The network itself must be "VoIP-ready" and endpoint devices need to be tuned for QoS.

Creating a high-quality VoIP system depends on understanding basic QoS concepts such as latency, jitter, packet loss, and echo. Specific strategies can then be put in place to identify potential deployment issues at a specific site and resolve them.