VoIP sometimes gets a bad rep because of data packet delays, which lessen audio and video quality. The effect of packet delays to VoIP quality varies – and there will always be packet delays.
Delays are natural occurrences in telecommunications, even traditional communications. After all, voice and data travel through a series of systems: from satellites to landlines, or from servers to landlines to your digital phone. The difference between one service and another is the amount of delay. And delay has a direct effect on the quality of communications.
Good network service is able to minimize the effects of delay on your VoIP quality. Effects are negligible, imperceptible even. You experience continuous good quality talk and video reception. This is VoIP at its best.
Sometimes however, you may experience packet delays, which translates to increased latency in your network and VoIP systems. Latency is defined as the time it takes for packets to travel from one point to another. Increased latency can cause dips in VoIP quality, which is perceptible to the users as low audio and video quality, echo, feedback and pauses.
Latency issues can be addressed by either the user or the network manager, depending on the severity and cause of packet delays.
Packet delays in VoIP are normal up to a certain point. These should never affect how parties talk to each other or see each other on video. VoIP technology is made to overcome normal delays and deliver quality connections, comparable (or even better) to wireline communications.
Packet delays – latency – have two main main causes: network connections and end systems.
In a network delay, traffic congestion and connection quality are the root causes of network quality dips. It could be that you are connecting to your network during peak hours. It could also be that your connection is not powerful enough for VoIP. Delays here vary from a minimal ten milliseconds to huge delays reaching thousands of milliseconds.
In end system delays, data handling causes latency problems. Data necessarily goes though encoding, decoding and jitter buffer, which can take longer than normal because of certain conditions. For instance, if there is network delay, jitter buffer time increases too as this stage is supposed to remove gaps between data packets.
With packet delays, the quality of VoIP naturally decreases. At a certain level, it can get too much that it diminishes benefits from VoIP communications.
As end users, there are some things you can do to circumvent issues with packet delays. The first thing to do here is to sign up with a VoIP Quality Monitoring service, such as VoIP Spear, to help determine if the cause of your decreased VoIP quality is indeed packet delay or latency. The service enables you to determine VoIP issues and causes, which can then be addressed either by you or your service provider.
Here are some troubleshooting measures you can take on the user's end:
