VoIP Phone Hype.....PhooeyWritten by Michael Lemm
I hold no ill will towards marketing, but do become offended when someone feels I should lose my critical analysis skills and buy into marketing hype. For example - revolutionary new technology allowing 1 digit calling? Easy connect to VoIP via cell phone? Yada yada...hype & emotion... &..well you get idea. The way VoIP works, there are several critical aspects to insure anything close to toll quality calling. First is instrument used. Next is inside wiring. Assuming both of these are not a problem, access line becomes next major factor. Here there are 3 points. First is quality of access line - its ability to deliver error free bit streams. Next is bandwidth. As a shared application, bandwidth must be sufficient to serve needs of both VoIP and all other applications simultaneously. Third is logical distribution of that bandwidth. In effect, bandwidth must be split between VoIP and other traffic to insure VoIP has a consistent available rate of communications between premise and POP. Getting all of above correct is not trivial, and those who attempt a pure plug and play approach stand a fair chance in being disappointed with their VoIP service. But let's assume this all goes well (at both ends for an end to end VoIP call). The next issue is travel over Internet from ingress POP to egress POP. Different carriers have different paths, which impacts latency. A VoIP session is probably most sensitive to latency of all common applications (although live video is probably most sensitive). The carrier incentive is to keep as much traffic as possible on their own facility. This is a business need, not a technical need, but it does impact quality of service users experience. Multiple carriers provides protection against failure, but it does not insure true shortest path routing. More important than multiple carriers is ability and willingness to purchase priority transport of packets based on IP header information or other protocol approaches, so that a VoIP call continues as a high priority session and with sufficient bandwidth across carrier's network.
| | DS3 Service in the Los Angeles Market Written by Michael Lemm
Searching for a DS3 in Los Angeles? Bandwidth has never been cheaper and Los Angeles is no exception to this. Many telecom companies built out their infrastructure in Metro cities and with crash that has taken place since 1999 many of these companies have seen usage of their pipes decrease significantly. The infrastructure that was laid is a fixed cost that companies are eager to recover. The result of reduced number of businesses in market seeking service and drop in pricing has created a buyers market.In a buyers market remember that you can push and probably get concessions from carrier but also remember that all carriers are not created equally. Many carriers may appear to offer a bargain price but you may be several hops from internet and have a problem with latency. You may also be using a small carrier that hasn't actually checked capacity of CO before you sign your contract and can't even deliver service they promised. The only way you'll discover this is when you start using your connection and find that at peak traffic times your connection is bogged down at a level below that which was guaranteed.
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