Internet Speed For VoIP?

[billbenson]

With one person using an internet connection for both all day work activity on a pc and a Vonage VoIP business line, how much upload bandwidth do you need for a clean connection?

[Harold Mansfield]

With one person using an internet connection for both all day work activity on a pc and a Vonage VoIP business line, how much upload bandwidth do you need for a clean connection?

The min speed according to my ISP is 20mbps to run the VOIP line. I personally would go far above the minimum just to have peace of mind and no chance of signal loss or slow internet speeds while I'm on the phone.

I have a VOIP line and have 150mbps speed and it's worth every penny.

[Freelancier]

Voice Over IP - Per Call Bandwidth Consumption - Cisco (http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html)

Worst case appears to be less than 100Kbps, which is about 1/10th a typical DSL line.

[Brian Altenhofel]

The min speed according to my ISP is 20mbps to run the VOIP line.

Your ISP is pulling your leg.

*Many* businesses run multiple VoIP lines over T1. T1 == 1.5Mbps.

Seriously... "business" internet service is quite possibly one of the biggest ripoffs out there, but it works because there's people who don't keep up and still equate "T1" with the "awesomely fast" of the 90's.

One of the reasons that I still work out of my home instead of renting an office space in the local metro is internet cost. The same line that I have right now (guaranteed 3Mbps down 2Mbps up) would cost 5x as much in a commercial zone. I really need something faster (I keep the down maxed out most of the time), but the next step up in this area is direct fiber, and that's cost prohibitive to install.

I remember making many VoIP calls on 28.8K and 33.6K service...

[Harold Mansfield]

Your ISP is pulling your leg.

*Many* businesses run multiple VoIP lines over T1. T1 == 1.5Mbps.

Seriously... "business" internet service is quite possibly one of the biggest ripoffs out there, but it works because there's people who don't keep up and still equate "T1" with the "awesomely fast" of the 90's.

One of the reasons that I still work out of my home instead of renting an office space in the local metro is internet cost. The same line that I have right now (guaranteed 3Mbps down 2Mbps up) would cost 5x as much in a commercial zone. I really need something faster (I keep the down maxed out most of the time), but the next step up in this area is direct fiber, and that's cost prohibitive to install.

I remember making many VoIP calls on 28.8K and 33.6K service...

I don't think my ISP offers anything under 20mbps. As far back as I remember that's the lowest they have.
Centurylink DSL offers 20mbps standard. Nothing higher.

I don't really know of any options to get anything less than that.

[billbenson]

You are talking about download speed. The more critical speed is upload speed. In your case, say you are uploading a site via FTP or even some large image, your phone will break up because you are sharing the upload bandwidth which in most cases is 1.5 Mb or so.

[billbenson]

I did a speed test two days ago and my upload speed to Atlanta was 2.5M or there abouts. My partner did the same thing and got 1.5Mb. This is really about my partner who's phone is breaking up. I'm fine. I also just did an upload test again and I got 13M upload. That's the highest I've ever seen. It was to Tampa though, which is my closest hub. I don't think my partners 1.5 will cut it for VoIP. This was tested on speedtest.net The first time we tested it was to Atlanta.

[Harold Mansfield]

My upload speed runs around 20-30mbps.
Just did a speed test on the same site as you:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3475035835.png (http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3475035835)


If I'm a snob about anything, it's good whiskey and internet speed.

Cable TV? That's another story. It irritates me to pay for that.

[billbenson]

Wow, that's fast Harold. I can't say I' e done this in a year or more, but I've been using Vonage VoIP without real problems for years. The last time time I did a speed test in that era was certainly less than a 5M upload.

That brings me back to the original question, is my friends 1.5 upload good enough for a good connection? He lives alone. He doesn't have a bunch of kids with tablets eating up bandwidth :)

[MyITGuy]

With one person using an internet connection for both all day work activity on a pc and a Vonage VoIP business line, how much upload bandwidth do you need for a clean connection?
Depends on the codec, but anything with 100kbps per concurrent call would be sufficient.

The more important factor is latency/jitter. Run this test and let me know what your results are: Pingtest.net - The Global Broadband Quality Test (http://www.pingtest.net/)

[MyITGuy]

The min speed according to my ISP is 20mbps to run the VOIP line. I personally would go far above the minimum just to have peace of mind and no chance of signal loss or slow internet speeds while I'm on the phone.

Overkill! A 20Mbps line could support upwards of 300 concurrent VoIP channels at a time (Assuming this connection was not being used for other purposes).

[MyITGuy]

That brings me back to the original question, is my friends 1.5 upload good enough for a good connection? He lives alone. He doesn't have a bunch of kids with tablets eating up bandwidth :)

Should be fine, but check for latency/jitter first: Pingtest.net - The Global Broadband Quality Test (http://www.pingtest.net/)

I would also recommend implementing QoS (Quality of Service - Purchase a router that supports this). This feature allows the voice data to take precedence and maximize the voice quality when possible/needed.

[billbenson]

Thanks Jeff. I'll do it over the weekend when I can get my partner to do it with me. I also need to recable my computers from a business modem to a personal modem. Weird but Brighthouse has great service for residential and horrible for business. They operate them like two separate companies.

[Brian Altenhofel]

The fastest consumer offerings around here are advertised as 50Mbps, but you're lucky if you get more than 5Mpbs/750kbps during off-peak hours unless you're doing SpeedTest. Commercial offerings run ~$50/mo/Mbps (triple if you want an SLA).

My ISP's uplink is 140Mbps total across three connections. Looking forward to some pending upgrades :)

As for QoS, definitely recommended. When we run our church's radio broadcast, we have a digital connection to the station. To make sure we don't have any drops or sags, the Tieline gets a 95% of the bandwidth dedicated to it during the worship service.

If you need more features and want to be a little cheap about it, are technically savvy, and don't mind taking a small risk, you can run www.dd-wrt.com | Unleash Your Router (http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index) on most Linksys routers and get many of the same features as a $600+ router. I personally run three of them as a mesh network so that you can't tell when you're handed off from router to router through the house or garage or back yard.

[Harold Mansfield]

Seems like we are talking about two different scenarios.

Some are talking about what it takes to run just the VOIP line, as in an office scenario where you have have separate connection for your VOIP lines and Internet.
And then some, like me, are talking about a Home Office situation where we are using a consumer package to run TV, Internet and Phone.

So if I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly, 1.5mbps is plenty to run just one VOIP line and nothing else. So my ISP telling me that 20mbps is the min recommended...they are taking into consideration that this is one line with which I'm running everything on, HD Cable, Internet, and Phone. (Besides that the lowest they offer consumers).

But Bill's partner's problem seems to be a home office situation where 1.5mbps won't do squat if he's running everything from one connection.

Am I understanding where we are here?

[Freelancier]

So if I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly, 1.5mbps is plenty to run just one VOIP line and nothing else.

No, 1.5Mpbs in both directions (never a certainty) is enough to run upwards of 10 VOIP lines if it's used exclusively for that. But if you're doing downloads, uploads, watching videos, playing internet games, etc. at the same time, it'll likely not run 1 VOIP line unless you have it set up in a QoS situation with the right hardware (which many people won't have the attention span to figure out whether they did it right).

[Harold Mansfield]

So if you have a business account (at an office), you're likely going to have separate connections for your VOIP lines and office internet. Is that correct?
Offices aren't running everything off of one connection like at home.

I think the answer to Bill's question is easy then. What does he have now (speed, and cable or DSL), and what's available?
If he has a 10-20mbps (Consumer) connection already, then it's either a tech problem, or something else on that line requires more speed.

Vonage recommends 90kbps or greater per phone line. I'm sure that doesn't take into consideration what else you are using the internet connection for.
https://support.vonage.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1060/~/check-your-internet-speed

Seems like that's low enough for any consumer broadband package.

[Freelancier]

So if you have a business account (at an office), you're likely going to have separate connections for your VOIP lines and office internet.

Maybe, but then again maybe not. Depends on who you get your service from and whether they segmented the services onto different hardware/wavelengths. In a SOHO environment, it's almost always all one connection shared amongst all services on the network, so your router is expected to arbitrate the bandwidth usage and prioritize the usage of certain services (like the VOIP requests) over other usage to maintain the desired quality of service.

[MyITGuy]

If you need more features and want to be a little cheap about it, are technically savvy, and don't mind taking a small risk, you can run www.dd-wrt.com | Unleash Your Router (http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index) on most Linksys routers and get many of the same features as a $600+ router. I personally run three of them as a mesh network so that you can't tell when you're handed off from router to router through the house or garage or back yard.

You can also check out the MikroTik/RouterOS/RouterBoard devices. I moved from DD-WRT to one of the RouterBoard routers and love it.

[Harold Mansfield]

This is really about my partner who's phone is breaking up. I'm fine. .

I'm curious. Are you sure it's his connection and not the myriad of other hardware possibilities including a crappy router? a crappy phone ? A bad or outdated modem? Is he using a headset or bluetooth?

I was having problems with my phone line a while back with what I thought was a bad connection. Turns out it was my bluetooth headset that was crappy. Once I replaced that, no more problems.

[MyITGuy]

Seems like we are talking about two different scenarios.

Some are talking about what it takes to run just the VOIP line, as in an office scenario where you have have separate connection for your VOIP lines and Internet.
And then some, like me, are talking about a Home Office situation where we are using a consumer package to run TV, Internet and Phone.

So if I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly, 1.5mbps is plenty to run just one VOIP line and nothing else. So my ISP telling me that 20mbps is the min recommended...they are taking into consideration that this is one line with which I'm running everything on, HD Cable, Internet, and Phone. (Besides that the lowest they offer consumers).

But Bill's partner's problem seems to be a home office situation where 1.5mbps won't do squat if he's running everything from one connection.

Am I understanding where we are here?

I touched on both.

If you're looking to just run a single VoIP Line, then all you need for bandwith is 100Kbps with low latency/jitter

If you're looking to run your home office off a single internet connection, then any current offering with more than 100Kbps upstream for each channel, combined with QoS will fit your needs.

I.E. If I have 5 phones and I want them all to be able to speak to someone at the same time (A.K.A. 5 Concurrent Calls), then I would look for an internet option that provided at least 500Kbps, with some additional bandwidth for web activity.

To expand on the item above, If I get an internet offering of 768Kbps upstream bandwith and 5 concurrent calls are taking place, this will only leave 268Kbps+- available for downloads. If QoS is enabled, then all you will be able to use is 268Kbps+-...without QoS enabled, then you could have quality issues as both protocols will be fighting for the traffic.

[MyITGuy]

So if you have a business account (at an office), you're likely going to have separate connections for your VOIP lines and office internet. Is that correct?
Offices aren't running everything off of one connection like at home.

Depends on your need for quality connections. If you absolutely need the best quality connection, and you have dozens of calls going over the network connection - Then get a dedicated network for VoIP.
If you can tolerate some issues, or don't have dozens of calls going over the network connection at the same time...then go with a single connection for both.

To share - I have a 10Meg connection (Up and Down) for call center traffic through Level3. This connection is only used for VoIP and will support approximately 150 calls at a time (We usually have 40 employees on the phone at the same time making outbound calls at a rate of 3 lines per employee. This generally results in 20K calls per day)
I then have a 20Meg connection (Up and Down) through AT&T Fiber for the office internet (150 employees) and PBX Users (40 lines with 5-10 concurrent calls at any given time)

We've had this solution in for the last 6 months with no complaints yet (Other than the calls per second we're sending Level3, but thats another story/issue)/

[Harold Mansfield]

I then have a 20Meg connection (Up and Down) through AT&T Fiber for the office internet (150 employees) and PBX Users (40 lines with 5-10 concurrent calls at any given time)


So I've always wondered about this. I see Cox advertising Business internet and the speeds are much lower than what I have at home and the price much higher.
Is that a dedicated 20mbps per individual connection ( or per computer) or 20mbps for the entire office to share?

[Freelancier]

I see Cox advertising Business internet and the speeds are much lower than what I have at home and the price much higher.
Comcast here advertises business-class service for double the price of consumer-class service. The only difference they admit to is that they have a QoS requirement in the contract for business that's not there for consumer. That and you get a static IP address and they open up all your ports (like port 80) for inbound action, so that you could put a web server at your business (something they discourage for consumers).

[Brian Altenhofel]

But Bill's partner's problem seems to be a home office situation where 1.5mbps won't do squat if he's running everything from one connection.

When I had a 1.5Mbps/768kbps connection, we had no problem running Netflix, Pandora, World of Warcraft, and Skype screensharing concurrently.

With the 3Mbps/2Mbps connection, I can stream in 720p with no buffering most of the time. My download side stays saturated most of the day.


So if you have a business account (at an office), you're likely going to have separate connections for your VOIP lines and office internet. Is that correct?
Offices aren't running everything off of one connection like at home.

Depends on the office and the provider. If you're leasing in an office building, it's likely all running through either one connection or two connections that are designed to piggyback each other in case of a failure. If you've got your own place, then it depends on how much you want to spend.


I think the answer to Bill's question is easy then. What does he have now (speed, and cable or DSL), and what's available?
If he has a 10-20mbps (Consumer) connection already, then it's either a tech problem, or something else on that line requires more speed.

Never trust the results from SpeedTest for the reason I mentioned previously. Some service providers treat traffic there with a little more favor so that users see the advertised speeds. Quite often, the real speeds for regular traffic are much, much lower.


You can also check out the MikroTik/RouterOS/RouterBoard devices. I moved from DD-WRT to one of the RouterBoard routers and love it.

I'll have to take a look.

My service provider uses MikroTik routers. For quite a few weeks he was fighting an issue where his OSPF routing tables were dropping randomly. One nice thing about knowing your service provider (and them knowing that your income relies on that connection) is you get static routes.


So I've always wondered about this. I see Cox advertising Business internet and the speeds are much lower than what I have at home and the price much higher.
Is that a dedicated 20mbps per individual connection ( or per computer) or 20mbps for the entire office to share?

For the entire office. And really, it's no different than what's being delivered to the consumer. They *do* have a QoS guarantee that basically says the business traffic gets priority over consumer traffic. Double the price again and you just might get an actual SLA.

Much of the time, it's more cost effective to get two lines from different providers without an SLA. Just make sure they don't enter the premises from the same direction. (I remember a few years ago that a datacenter who liked to advertise "4 redundant service providers" had all 4 of those fiber lines cut at the same time.)

By the way, I'm speaking with quite a bit of experience with enterprise/gov-level service. A triple T-1 connection (2 down, 1 up, for 3Mbps/1.5Mbps) can support three multi-point video conferences and ~40 active users. That's why when people say "50Mbps just isn't enough for CoD/BF4/WoW", I just have to say "eh... whatevs".

[Harold Mansfield]

Never trust the results from SpeedTest for the reason I mentioned previously. Some service providers treat traffic there with a little more favor so that users see the advertised speeds. Quite often, the real speeds for regular traffic are much, much lower.


So then how do you know what speed you are ever getting? What measurement is reliable?

[billbenson]

I'm curious. Are you sure it's his connection and not the myriad of other hardware possibilities including a crappy router? a crappy phone ? A bad or outdated modem? Is he using a headset or bluetooth?

I was having problems with my phone line a while back with what I thought was a bad connection. Turns out it was my bluetooth headset that was crappy. Once I replaced that, no more problems.

Could be the router. I don't have bluetooth on the phone and have switched out different phones. In any case it only happens when my partner calls me. He has two phones that aren't used at the same time and 1 pc.

[Freelancier]

Could be the router.Some VOIP hardware wants to be outside the router so that it can ensure QoS priority. It could just be that he wired up the network wrong.

[Brian Altenhofel]

So then how do you know what speed you are ever getting? What measurement is reliable?

Large file from a known reliable source (such as a CDN) that has a much bigger pipe.

[Harold Mansfield]

Some VOIP hardware wants to be outside the router so that it can ensure QoS priority. It could just be that he wired up the network wrong.
Good point. My VOIP router works independent of my other router AND the modem. One should not be running through the other. At least that's what I was told when they set mine up.
My cable line is split, one side going cable straight to the phone router/modem thingy and the other going to the internet modem.

[MyITGuy]

Good point. My VOIP router works independent of my other router AND the modem. One should not be running through the other. At least that's what I was told when they set mine up.
My cable line is split, one side going cable straight to the phone router/modem thingy and the other going to the internet modem.

Ideally, you should only have 1 router/device connected to your internet provider, unless they are providing two separate circuits, otherwise this could cause the following issues:
Option 1 - VoIP Router is first in the connection chain results in QoS rules being applied properly, but then likely results in a double-nat situation that could cause network quality issues, and virtually impossible to configure inbound routes/firewall rules

Option 2 - Router is the first in the connection chain will result in a proper NAT configuration for your network, but then renders the VoIP router useless as it will be unaware of any data traffic being passed through the 1st router.

[MyITGuy]

So I've always wondered about this. I see Cox advertising Business internet and the speeds are much lower than what I have at home and the price much higher.
Is that a dedicated 20mbps per individual connection ( or per computer) or 20mbps for the entire office to share?

This happens for a variety of reasons, the first and primary one is overselling/capacity. The ISP's can take a 1Gbps connection and sell 100Mbps to 100 households betting on the fact that these 100 households will never utilize the speed/capacity at the same exact time, but if they do then they will only get a portion of the total bandwidth available and their complaints will fall on deaf ears.

Take this same exact connection and sell it to the same 100 businesses who are paying 2x+ the price for the connection, who all have an average of 10-15 users each using the connection and they will quickly realize they are not getting the speeds they were promised. This results in the ISP upgrading the connection from 1Gpbs to a 5 to 8Gbps connection to account for the peak/average demand.

Additional factors that are taken into consideration for business services are the ability to run servers, have static IPs which may require more expensive equipment along with a Service Level Agreement that provides X-hour turn around time for repairs or the bill starts going to zero (What type of credits can residential users expect for a days outage - None)

This does come at a price though. Residential services come in anywhere from $40 to $125/month and generally have limitations (I.E. AT&T DSL/UVerse only offers 6Mbps down and 768Kbps up, Brighthouse only offers 50Mbps Down and 5Mbps up). These same services in a business environment jump to ~$150 for AT&T and $220 for Brighthouse.

Going to an enterprise service such as AT&T Fiber, Brighthouse Fiber, FP&L Fiber and etc will result in slower speeds, but more assurances in the contract and more flexibility (I.E. Each provider is around the $750 mark for the fiber and 10Mbps of up/down bandwidth)

[billbenson]

Depends on the codec, but anything with 100kbps per concurrent call would be sufficient.

The more important factor is latency/jitter. Run this test and let me know what your results are: Pingtest.net - The Global Broadband Quality Test (http://www.pingtest.net/)

I got rid of my business modem (its only me in my home office), and upgraded to 60 download and 5 upload for residential. From what you have said that should be adequate. Funny thing, Brighthouse residencial is 24/7 but Brighthouse business is only business hours plus sat and sun. To get the increased bandwidth I need a new modem which is being installed Tue.

The new modem has 4 router ports and wireless. So instead of having all these daisy chained modems and routers, I can go from a modem/router to the vonage device. We'll see Tue but it seems like a much cleaner solution.

I'll let you know what the ping and jitter is after Tue.

I'm assuming:

Ping = response time from the first network router it hits??

Jitter = signal to noise ratio??

[MyITGuy]

The new modem has 4 router ports and wireless. So instead of having all these daisy chained modems and routers, I can go from a modem/router to the vonage device. We'll see Tue but it seems like a much cleaner solution.
Just note that their modem doesn't provide much in terms of flexibility/access. So if you want to configure the Wireless SSID, utilize port forwarding or etc then you may want to consider using this device as a modem only and picking up/using your own router. If you go this route, just be sure to have them place their modem in "Bridge Mode" so you don't have a double-nat situation again.



I'm assuming:

Ping = response time from the first network router it hits??

Jitter = signal to noise ratio??

Ping is the roundtrip time for a single packet to get to its destination, then back to you. For VoIP its recommended that this number be under 50ms
While running a ping against any IP/Domain would give you a general idea of the quality of the connection, you should try to ping the IP/Domain that you are connecting to for VoIP Service to get a better understanding. You may need to contact your provider for this information.

Jitter is the deviation of packets being delivered. This is essentially a ping running for X seconds and reviewing the lowest/highest and average ping result and measuring the differences. The lower this number is, then the better your VoIP call quality will be.

[billbenson]

Jeff, what is an acceptable jitter level?

[MyITGuy]

Jeff, what is an acceptable jitter level?

I'd suggest anything under 25ms would be recommended.

Some VoIP Devices have a "Jitter Buffer" that can be enabled which can help if you are at/above this threshold...depending on how large the buffer is set to, this can impact the silence between the time party A stops speaking and Party B starts Speaking.

[billbenson]

Ok, I have a ping of 24ms and a jitter of 4ms with the Brighthouse router / modem.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Ok, I have a ping of 24ms and a jitter of 4ms with the Brighthouse router / modem.

That's definitely fine.

To Google's DNS servers, I have an average ping of 31.5ms and jitter (stdev) of 10ms.

[MyITGuy]

That's definitely fine.

To Google's DNS servers, I have an average ping of 31.5ms and jitter (stdev) of 10ms.

Agreed. You shouldn't have any quality issues with a connection like that. Note: Brighthouse has always been great for me in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area.