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VoIP QoS (Quality of Service)

Small and Medium Business as well as  Enterprises are now implementing more mission-critical process in a cloud/hosted environment.   Many times, VoIP and Unified Communications is the first application that is moved to the cloud.   However, many find out the hard way that VoIP does not always produce pristine calls when the available bandwidth is not effectively managed to ensure VoIP call quality. The bandwidth required by other applications and services can negatively impact voice quality. For example, a sync triggered for a Dropbox account could create a spike in bandwidth usage and cause existing VoIP calls to experience packet drop. Conventional QoS does not resolve the problem as the router needs to understand VoIP and effectively manage and prioritize the traffic.

Draytek has implemented an innovative VoIP QoS technology with an algorithm designed to preserve VoIP calls quality bydynamically discovering VoIP calls and throttling other traffic to always ensure that there is bandwidth for the next call. Even the most advanced traffic shaping solutions in the market can take few seconds to throttle traffic,(especially inbound traffic) when more bandwidth is needed for VoIP Calls, momentarily affecting VoIP quality across the system.  This unique approach, ensures VoIP quality at all times while minimally impacting available bandwidth when there are no calls in progress. The DrayTek solution can be implanted to reserve bandwidth for the next two calls if traffic dynamics demand it.

In the past, configuring this type of QoS plan required a great deal of network knowledge and device specific training using a command line interface or a rudimentary GUI. Experience with technologies, protocols or terms such as DiffServ (Differentiated Services), CoS (Class of Service), 801.1p, and ToS (Type of Service) were required for properly implementing a QoS solution. In addition, a traffic shaping router needed to be configured for classes and buckets, priorities, policies and speeds. Moreover, classifying VoIP traffic presents additional complexity as the RTP (Real Time Protocol) traffic, which carries the media, runs on UDP ports that are negotiated on the fly within the SIP/SDP signaling.

In an SMB, where the main objective for implementing QoS is preserving VoIP / SIP calls quality, this type of set-up can be overly complicated and beyond the skill-set of most SMBs.

DrayTek has made it very easy to configure VoIP QoS.   Set-up can be accomplished by anyone with minimal technical knowledge.   Set-up of QoS is as simple as ticking a checkbox and defining the SIP port. When enabling DrayTek’s VoIP QoS, everything is automatically setup in the background. The DrayTek engine is capable of recognizing the SIP signaling and associate the media stream (RTP) to it. Traffic shaping algorithms explained automatically detect and manage VoIP calls for perfect QoS with just two clicks.

 

Clarity Technologies Group, LLC is a certified Dray Tek partner. Call Clarity Technologies Group, LLC today for more information on the entire Dray Tek line today at 800-354-4160 !

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