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SIP Trunking Quality of Service

SIP trunking delivers many advantages, most notably, a big advantage in cost and provisioning time. Quality of service (QoS) however, must be taken into account. Given the right circumstances, SIP trunking can deliver equal quality to a PRI (Primary Rate Interface) connection.

There are a few nuts-and-bolts issues that may cause some quality of service issues. For example, since SIP trunking relies on IP (Internet Protocol), there is a significant amount of header overhead. There is nothing that can be done to reduce that, but given adequate capacity and a good high-speed connection, quality is the same. As a result, SIP trunking is best for users that have a "fat" connection that comes with a QoS guarantee.

SIP means Quality of Service

Quality of Service is always an issue when transmitting time-sensitive packets (such as voice) over an IP network. IP networking is by nature a "best-effort" proposition, with bursty traffic flows and the potential for rerouted traffic or lost packets. When IP packets are lost, the network sends the packet again, which in the case of normal Internet traffic, is not problematic. But when that occurs with voice transmissions, the result is "jitter", or a loss in voice quality. Of course, advances in the Internet Protocol and in VoIP equipment in general have been able to overcome much of that, and today, it is possible to enjoy VoIP calls that have the same voice quality as the ordinary PSTN.

The most common approach to QoS in VoIP installations using SIP trunking is to add more bandwidth, and having "fat" pipes is always recommended for VoIP users. Beyond that, VoIP and data traffic may be split into two distinct connections, which avoids any potential congestion on the internal network. If VoIP has its own dedicated circuit, then QoS is less of an issue, since there is no other traffic competing for bandwidth.

Furthermore, an on-premises QoS router will address priority issues, assigning priority to VoIP packets over packets that can sustain delay better. This will also lead to better "traffic shaping" which also helps to ensure that inbound VoIP packets have enough capacity. This may occur through "tagging", which is a process that assigns a label to each VoIP traffic, which assigns that packet priority over other traffic. This can occur when MPLS circuits are used.

Alternately, a firewall that is SIP-aware has a wide variety of techniques that can help shape traffic and ensure QoS for VoIP packets, including "throttling," which simply holds back ordinary traffic to allow VoIP traffic to flow through. Think of it as a type of virtual traffic cop in your network.

Submit a SIP Trunking VoIP quote request today for your business and save up to 80% on your monthly phone bills.

Business SIP Trunking Service

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