Successful VoIP deployments all have a single reoccurring theme - Quality Tier One Bandwidth
This is key and cannot be overlooked. Quality bandwidth with LOW LATENCY and MINIMAL PACKET LOSS play a huge role in delivering voice across the internet. Tier one means the underlying ISP owns and operates the backbone on which your voice and data will travel. Since these carriers have total control over their respected backbones they can make improvements from an engineering standpoint. Tier one carriers back their services with SLA's. SLA's essentially act as your bill of rights - It's a guarantee from the carriers. 2 key metrics measured by all major tier one carriers are:
- Latency, which is the amount of time it takes a packet to travel from source to destination, is one of the key metrics measured by carrier SLA's and without low latency your voice quality will suffer. Below 140 milliseconds is considered adequate latency by most VoIP providers.
- Packet Loss, which means the loss of data in a packet based network, usually due to congestion or when a device has reached its maximum capacity. Dropping packets is equivalent to dropping syllables and can degrade voice quality if it's not kept to a minimum.
These are the two primary variables that should be taken into consideration when implementing VoIP.
