Will VoIP affect my Bandwidth?

[guest]

I am using Sunrocket as a test for my VOIP at home. Will using this service cause me bandwidth problems with my High speed cable modem?

Ernest

[andyf]

Hi Ernest.

Very unlikely, unless you have a poor broadband connection you should not notice much difference. For starters, VoIP only uses the bandwidth when you are making a call so the only concern would be when someone in your household is on the internet at the same time as you make a phone call with VoIP.

However, the VoIP connection takes only 90kb/s bandwidth for one of the better codec settings. Now for downlink, this is almost negligible since most broadband connections these days are at least 1Mb/s (see http://www.whichvoip.com/index_broadband.html ). For uplink this 90kb/s is a higher percentage of your overall bandwidth since uplink broadband speeds are typically about 384kb/s for home asymmetrical links. However, this is highly unlikely to be an issue especially as most uplink internet traffic is simple web page requests which are small packets and thus bandwidth.

If you have a router I recommend you place that downline from your VoIP ATA though so that the ATA can prioritize voice over data so you always get decent quality calls.

Hope this helps.
Andy

[guest]

Thanks Andy for the great response. The prioritize of voice over data is that set-up in my router?? I have a d-link.

Thanks
Ernest

[andyf]

Hi Ernest.

The prioritization is done inside the VoIP ATA (or gizmo as Sunrocket like to call it). They simply throttle the downlink data traffic if need be (e.g. you have a VoIP call up and running and someone in your household tries to upload a huge data file over the internet).

Note that this only works if you have the broadband modem connected to your ATA and then your DLINK router and PCs. If you have the router connected before the ATA you have no priority traffic so your voice quality could suffer under extreme conditions.

I've been using VoIP for ages and love it. Sure there's the occasional problem and some bad reviews out there but remember, many people who post reviews do it because they've had a bad experience, we don't always hear from the many satisfied VoIP users! Also, the setup is key to this technology (as mentioned above). So long as you have a decent broadband connection and a decent VoIP provider and you follow the installation guidelines, it is plain sailing in my opinion.

Best of luck and please post a review when you're up and running and let us know about your experiences:

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/user_r...w_template.htm

Andy