Testing Your Internet Phone

If you're like me, you want to complete your installation by getting out on the road and seeing what this baby can do! There are testing sites that can help you determine how your service is performing. Testing allows you to spot potential problems before they affect your communications.

Bandwidth testing

For those who might have dropped into this chapter, welcome. I discussed bandwidth testing in earlier chapters, but it makes sense to test again after your service is installed. This testing will help you spot any service-quality issues that may have been introduced by the addition of your new hardware devices.

Sites such as Bandwidth Place (www.bandwidthplace.com) offer broadband bandwidth testing. A quick Google search for "bandwidth test" will give you a list of other testing sites. Refer to Table 3.1 in Chapter 3 for more information about how much bandwidth you should have.

Voice-quality testing

Now that your service is active, you can perform some voice-quality tests. You can make test calls to family members and friends, or you can use the services of an organization such as TestYourVoIP.com. These free testing services test the call quality of your system. Especially interesting is the Golden Phone service (Figure 5.17), which records an actual VoIP call and grades the quality of the reception.

Figure 5.17. Golden Phone test results

Dealing with poor test results

If your voice-test results are not to your liking, you can make some changes to improve your scores.

Alternative Codecs

If you are using a low-bandwidth (Bandwidth Saver) protocol such as G.729 or G.726, consider changing to G.711. This will often improve your service scores. Alternatively, try a different low-bandwidth codec. It may make a difference in your performance while keeping your bandwidth low.

Quality of Service (QOS) Settings

If your TA is located behind a router, you might have to enable Quality of Service (QoS) settings on your router to let the TA appropriate more bandwidth during calls.

Another alternative would be to move the TA to the Internet side of your router. This may cause problems with your Internet connection, however, so check with your ISP before taking this step.

Bandwidth Concerns

If you simply have low bandwidth, you might have to upgrade your Internet service to gain additional bandwidth. Your Internet access provider will often have a higher-bandwidth service you can try. You might also consider changing Internet access providers.