VOIP - Is assured broadband really needed?

[Edu-IT]

For VOIP, is an assured broadband connection really needed?

[FN-GM]

We don't use on. We use our leased line and never had an issue. Plus the leased line has a backup connection so is better than a dedicated ADSL line.

 

If you're school is short on bandwidth you could put QOS on the connection.

[Geoff]

No it isn't, you can use a bog standard internet connection and most of the time it will be fine. You will only get call quality issues if your VoIP had bandwidth or latency issues.

 

IMHO assured broadband is a bit of a sales con. Often times the problems are with the VoIP providers systems (or whatever carrier they are reselling) or it's an issue with the local POP (in which case it doesn't matter who you get the broadband off, it all terminates at the same BT Exchange).

[SchoolsBroadband]

For VOIP, is an assured broadband connection really needed?

 

It depends what you get as part of your assured broadband service and if you've had any issues with your current internet connection from your ISP.

 

Have a think what would happen if your broadband connection was DDOS'd? I don't know which ISP you're referring to but if a line is DDOS'd and firewalling etc is done onsite rather than in the cloud then you will find that VoIP probably won't work.

 

Assured broadband services can mitigate it to an extent. e.g. we are looking to offer our own Assured broadband where VoIP effectively doesn't even touch the Internet so less points of failure and less things to go wrong. It gives you assurances that it will work and gives you an SLA around it too. Most of the time a normal Internet connection is absolutely fine so long as you have some kind of QOS on your firewall BUT there can still be instances where you can have issues. Personally I've sold and installed hosted VoIP and SIP trunking for 10 years so well versed with what can go wrong and there are all sorts of things that you wouldn't normally think of.

 

If BT sold ISDN lines saying "they'll probably work most of the time" then they'd be a laughing stock. if your school or business relies on the telephone (and most will) ask yourself what would happen if they didn't work for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, an hour? a day?? if the answer is it doesn't matter then sure go for VoIP over a normal shared broadband connection. If you want guaranteed call quality an SLA around uptime, bandwidth available for SIP channels , jitter and latency then go assured or ensure your ISP can do some kind of network level QOS if its for their own service. If you're using a VOIP service on the general Internet then there's probably no point having an assured line as the ISP can only assure things up to their network edge.

 

Thanks and good luck.

 

Dave