Today, we introduce fellow Northeast Ohio blogger Brett Harney, Principal at Corporate Technologies Group in Hudson, Ohio to share with us his buyer’s guide for SMB’s on Voice over IP technology:
A Buying Guide for Small Business: VoIP vs. Hosted VoIP
We came across a great article on the basics of VoIP that explains the difference between hosted and self-hosted Voice over IP in a clear manner, perfect for our Back to Basics blog series. It also provides some insight that many SMB’s need when deciding to move to VoIP: how much bandwidth is enough for my voice network? The article was found on PC World and written by Brad Chacos. We recommend reading the entire article here, but below are some highlights we would like to share with our blog readers:
“As Voice over Internet Protocol communication matures and as high-speed Internet becomes cheap and ubiquitous, an increasing number of businesses are ditching conventional landlines and jumping to VoIP.
VoIP sounds almost magical: The hype makes it sound more flexible, more full-featured, and best of all, significantly cheaper than placing your calls through traditional telephone service providers…
How Does VoIP Work?
Generally, things are pretty simple if you’re looking for a hosted service. Many of the top VoIP providers handle all the heavy lifting offsite, delivering calls to your phones and software clients without much hassle, especially if you use phones that are plug-and-play certified for the service in question. The majority require no additional on-site hardware aside from those phones; at most, you might need to find a space for a small box of hardware somewhere on-site.
In contrast, maintaining a self-hosted, on-site VoIP system requires a bit more work. You need an IP-based private branch exchange—a VoIP-friendly version of the PBX phone systems that many offices use—to route your calls to the appropriate phones on your network, as well as a device called a PSTN gateway. The PSTN gateway sits between the IP-PBX software and the analog signals of the public switched telephone network, converting calls to and from digital signals as necessary.
No matter which option you choose, typically you can handle the basic settings for your phone lines or extensions over the phone, while tweaking more advanced options requires diving into your provider’s online account interface.
What Do You Need to Implement VoIP?
Depending on the size of your company and the infrastructure you already have in place, jumping on the VoIP bandwagon could cost your company next to nothing, or it could entail significant up-front costs.
VoIP requires a broadband connection—and the more simultaneous users you have, the more bandwidth you’ll need. If you work alone out of a home office, or if you have only a few employees, you won’t have much to worry about…
Make sure that your internal network—including your routers and switches—can handle the load, too. Most providers suggest using a router with configurable Quality of Service settings and assigning VoIP traffic high priority to maximize quality.
If your Internet service provider has a bandwidth cap in place, you should take that into consideration as well. Most VoIP service providers use the high-quality G.711 codec for VoIP communications, which consumes 64kb of data every second you talk. In reality, even a large number of people should be able to chat it up on VoIP without having to worry about hitting bandwidth caps, but you’ll want to keep close tabs on your data usage to avoid exceeding that cap.”
Right Sizing your Voice Network
Whether you will be using a Hosted VoIP service, or and onsite VoIP system, right sizing your bandwidth for VoIP is critical. CTG’s Voice Utilization Assessment can pinpoint the number of call paths required to handle your call volume during peak calling periods. This information will allow you to right-size your voice network and ensure you have the correct bandwidth in place to ensure your call quality remains high when using VoIP.
Contact Great Lakes Computer today to be introduced to Brett at CTG today.
We came across a great article on the basics of VoIP that explains the difference between hosted and self-hosted Voice over IP in a clear manner, perfect for our Back to Basics blog series. It also provides some insight that many SMB’s need when deciding to move to VoIP: how much bandwidth is enough for my voice network? The article was found on PC World and written by Brad Chacos. We recommend reading the entire article here, but below are some highlights we would like to share with our blog readers:
“As Voice over Internet Protocol communication matures and as high-speed Internet becomes cheap and ubiquitous, an increasing number of businesses are ditching conventional landlines and jumping to VoIP.
VoIP sounds almost magical: The hype makes it sound more flexible, more full-featured, and best of all, significantly cheaper than placing your calls through traditional telephone service providers…
How Does VoIP Work?
Generally, things are pretty simple if you’re looking for a hosted service. Many of the top VoIP providers handle all the heavy lifting offsite, delivering calls to your phones and software clients without much hassle, especially if you use phones that are plug-and-play certified for the service in question. The majority require no additional on-site hardware aside from those phones; at most, you might need to find a space for a small box of hardware somewhere on-site.
In contrast, maintaining a self-hosted, on-site VoIP system requires a bit more work. You need an IP-based private branch exchange—a VoIP-friendly version of the PBX phone systems that many offices use—to route your calls to the appropriate phones on your network, as well as a device called a PSTN gateway. The PSTN gateway sits between the IP-PBX software and the analog signals of the public switched telephone network, converting calls to and from digital signals as necessary.
No matter which option you choose, typically you can handle the basic settings for your phone lines or extensions over the phone, while tweaking more advanced options requires diving into your provider’s online account interface.
What Do You Need to Implement VoIP?
Depending on the size of your company and the infrastructure you already have in place, jumping on the VoIP bandwagon could cost your company next to nothing, or it could entail significant up-front costs.
VoIP requires a broadband connection—and the more simultaneous users you have, the more bandwidth you’ll need. If you work alone out of a home office, or if you have only a few employees, you won’t have much to worry about…
Make sure that your internal network—including your routers and switches—can handle the load, too. Most providers suggest using a router with configurable Quality of Service settings and assigning VoIP traffic high priority to maximize quality.
If your Internet service provider has a bandwidth cap in place, you should take that into consideration as well. Most VoIP service providers use the high-quality G.711 codec for VoIP communications, which consumes 64kb of data every second you talk. In reality, even a large number of people should be able to chat it up on VoIP without having to worry about hitting bandwidth caps, but you’ll want to keep close tabs on your data usage to avoid exceeding that cap.”
Right Sizing your Voice Network
Whether you will be using a Hosted VoIP service, or and onsite VoIP system, right sizing your bandwidth for VoIP is critical. CTG’s Voice Utilization Assessment can pinpoint the number of call paths required to handle your call volume during peak calling periods. This information will allow you to right-size your voice network and ensure you have the correct bandwidth in place to ensure your call quality remains high when using VoIP.
– See more at: http://www.ctgusa.net/blog/a-buying-guide-for-small-business-voip-vs-hosted-voip/#sthash.iWg4wXwM.dpuf
We came across a great article on the basics of VoIP that explains the difference between hosted and self-hosted Voice over IP in a clear manner, perfect for our Back to Basics blog series. It also provides some insight that many SMB’s need when deciding to move to VoIP: how much bandwidth is enough for my voice network? The article was found on PC World and written by Brad Chacos. We recommend reading the entire article here, but below are some highlights we would like to share with our blog readers:
“As Voice over Internet Protocol communication matures and as high-speed Internet becomes cheap and ubiquitous, an increasing number of businesses are ditching conventional landlines and jumping to VoIP.
VoIP sounds almost magical: The hype makes it sound more flexible, more full-featured, and best of all, significantly cheaper than placing your calls through traditional telephone service providers…
How Does VoIP Work?
Generally, things are pretty simple if you’re looking for a hosted service. Many of the top VoIP providers handle all the heavy lifting offsite, delivering calls to your phones and software clients without much hassle, especially if you use phones that are plug-and-play certified for the service in question. The majority require no additional on-site hardware aside from those phones; at most, you might need to find a space for a small box of hardware somewhere on-site.
In contrast, maintaining a self-hosted, on-site VoIP system requires a bit more work. You need an IP-based private branch exchange—a VoIP-friendly version of the PBX phone systems that many offices use—to route your calls to the appropriate phones on your network, as well as a device called a PSTN gateway. The PSTN gateway sits between the IP-PBX software and the analog signals of the public switched telephone network, converting calls to and from digital signals as necessary.
No matter which option you choose, typically you can handle the basic settings for your phone lines or extensions over the phone, while tweaking more advanced options requires diving into your provider’s online account interface.
What Do You Need to Implement VoIP?
Depending on the size of your company and the infrastructure you already have in place, jumping on the VoIP bandwagon could cost your company next to nothing, or it could entail significant up-front costs.
VoIP requires a broadband connection—and the more simultaneous users you have, the more bandwidth you’ll need. If you work alone out of a home office, or if you have only a few employees, you won’t have much to worry about…
Make sure that your internal network—including your routers and switches—can handle the load, too. Most providers suggest using a router with configurable Quality of Service settings and assigning VoIP traffic high priority to maximize quality.
If your Internet service provider has a bandwidth cap in place, you should take that into consideration as well. Most VoIP service providers use the high-quality G.711 codec for VoIP communications, which consumes 64kb of data every second you talk. In reality, even a large number of people should be able to chat it up on VoIP without having to worry about hitting bandwidth caps, but you’ll want to keep close tabs on your data usage to avoid exceeding that cap.”
Right Sizing your Voice Network
Whether you will be using a Hosted VoIP service, or and onsite VoIP system, right sizing your bandwidth for VoIP is critical. CTG’s Voice Utilization Assessment can pinpoint the number of call paths required to handle your call volume during peak calling periods. This information will allow you to right-size your voice network and ensure you have the correct bandwidth in place to ensure your call quality remains high when using VoIP.
– See more at: http://www.ctgusa.net/blog/a-buying-guide-for-small-business-voip-vs-hosted-voip/#sthash.iWg4wXwM.dpuf
Learn more about the author Brett Harney
