This is our 6th of 12 blogs on the subject of SIP Trunks. Subscribe in the box to the right to receive an email notification for each one in the series.
Click here to read the previous blog in this series.
Redundant Internet Connections: Dramatically Increase Voice & Data Reliability
The old paradigm was to have a dedicated voice circuit and a dedicated data circuit. With the advent of VoIP, the dedicated voice circuit can be eliminated. While that saves money, it also makes a business more vulnerable in the case of a data circuit failure. And that vulnerability grows even greater with the shift to cloud-based applications.
So, this sounds like a bad situation, but there is a happy story in here. Due to the savings of SIP Trunking, many customers have been able to install a second data circuit to increase reliability and Internet speed without additional cost. We consider this a triple win:
- Eliminate the costly traditional telephone bill
- Increase Internet bandwidth
- Improve data and voice reliability by installing redundant data circuits
And most times this can be accomplished with little or no increased monthly cost. Sure, the savings from SIP Trunking is absorbed by the higher amount spent on data circuits but in one fell swoop, you’ve updated your entire network to support VoIP, cloud applications and increased Internet speed.
Redundant Circuit Option 1
In addition to the usual method of running VoIP on your data circuit, there are two alternatives of delivering quality data connections that support VoiP. The first is the simple solution of having two circuits. One that is dedicated to voice and the other dedicated to data. This alleviates from having all critical services going through one circuit. So, much like the world before VoIP, if data fails, voice keeps working and visa versa. This solution allows for a cheap, fast connection such as a cable circuit for data, and a more reliable, albeit slower circuit for voice.
Redundant Circuit Option 2
The second solution also uses two circuits but adds a device called a dual WAN router. This device will allow the two circuits to auto-failover. So, if your primary data circuit is interrupted, data traffic moves to the voice circuit. And the same backup capabilities exist if the voice circuit has problems. This is a beautiful solution as it actually makes VoIP more reliable than the old phone service it replaced.
In summary, Internet connection speed, while important, is only one of many factors that need to be considered when moving to your new VoiP service. It’s a bit of upfront engineering and cost, but the result is lowered monthly costs, improved features and better voice quality. Welcome to the 21st century of telecommunications.
In my next blog in this SIP Trunking series, we will be providing some great tips on how to measure call quality and info on how to determine which codec is right for your business. You can’t make a great decision without reading this blog!
