Monitor & Diagnose Poor VoIP Quality

Stop guessing and know how VoIP is performing over the internet

How is VoIP quality measured and reported?

The industry standard for measuring VoIP quality is through a Mean Opinion Score (MOS). A MOS score is calculated from a call’s underlying performance metrics, Jitter, Latency, and Packet Loss. MOS scores are on a scale from 1 to 5. A MOS score of 1 represents a completely poor call where the callers are unable to communicate. Typically a ‘good’ quality call has a MOS score of 3.5 or above. The maximum obtainable MOS score for a VoIP call made with G.711 CODEC is 4.4.

What is Jitter?
Jitter refers to the variance in time delay for when packets arrive over a network, measured in milliseconds (ms). A high amount of Jitter in a VoIP call can cause the call to sound choppy, or even lose words and sentences. Acceptable Jitter for a VoIP call is anything below 30ms.

What is Latency?
Latency is a measure of how much time it takes for one data packet to move from one point to another on a network. High Latency on a VoIP call can lead to delays happening in real time, and packets being discarded by VoIP equipment. You may feel like you are talking over each other on a call because the VoIP packets are delayed in one or both directions. Acceptable Latency for a VoIP call is anything below 150ms.

What is Packet Loss?
Packet Loss refers to data packets failing to reach their intended destination when traveling over a network. High Packet Loss on a VoIP call will have a significant impact on the overall Mean Opinion Score and will lead to parts of the conversation missing with words and sentences being dropped. Acceptable Packet Loss for a VoIP call is 1% – 2.5% of the total packet stream.

VoIP Network Performance Reporting

Reply Cloud establishes a baseline of persistent VoIP quality metrics on the network
Identify what network performance was like over the internet and along the data path when a poor call is reported
Per hop analysis of the inbound and outbound data path
Is your internet connection affecting your VoIP quality?

Network performance directly impacts VoIP Quality. When a hosted VoIP solution is deployed in an ‘Over The Top’ environment (on your network with any internet service provider), then network performance is the largest variable in determining how VoIP is performing and why it might be poor.

With hosted VoIP being expected to perform over any network and internet provider, how can we identify or eliminate network performance as the cause of poor VoIP quality? The first step is visibility.

How does the Reply Cloud platform help?

The Reply Cloud platform uniquely establishes a baseline of VoIP performance and persistently monitors and records the Jitter, Latency, and Packet Loss data from your location along the data path to your VoIP provider’s data centers (available for select VoIP providers).

Some VoIP providers will include in their reporting, a MOS score for calls made on their platform. When a call has a poor MOS score, providers may not be able to determine the cause unless there is visibility into how the network was performing when that call was made.

The Reply Cloud solution enables you to view your network performance history and see how it was performing when the call was made. You can view Jitter, Latency, and Packet Loss over the internet and determine if there was a network performance issue that caused the poor call quality. Reply Cloud allows you to see each hop in the data path, as well as see network events like path changes.

Reply Cloud provides the visibility needed to identify or eliminate your network performance as the cause for poor VoIP quality.