Hello everyone. I am new here and pretty much a novice when it comes to VOIP systems. So please bear with me.

I work in a medium sized medical practice. We have 3 offices and use a ESI-200 phone system. My 2 remote offices connect to my main office with a point to point T-1’s. The T-1’s support both Voice and Data. My problem is very poor voice quality coming from my remote offices.

I have tried many things to correct this problem but, nothing seems to help. First, I verified that my T-1’s were performing up to standard and they were not getting excessive errors and dropped packets. I also made sure to enable the QOS on the bridges. I have even had my T-1 vendor test and monitor the lines for any issues and they are coming back clean.

I have installed HP ProCurve 1810G layer 2 switches at each remote office and configured the VLAN’s to give the VOIP traffic priority over the data. Still no good. Obviously I am missing something or doing something wrong.
Has anyone else had these types of issues? If so, how did you handle them? ANY help would be greatly appreciated!

1 more thing. Does anyone know of a good monitoring software program for monitoring the performance of my VOIP system? I have tried several and none of them seem to work.

Thanks in advance.
Mike

Your ESI Reseller has access to that software, have you contacted them?

Yes, Not much help there.

ESI Check is available on the esi users site. www.esiusers.com

Giving voice priority over data won't make a whit of difference if your T1's are saturated. You need to do some traffic shaping to ensure that doesn't happen. A T1 is not that big a pipe anymore (as far as data goes- it's plenty big for many voice channels on its own) and a single desktop PC user at one of your remote sites can easily saturate a T1.

ESI's "Network Assessment" will point you in the right direction. It's available to all IP-certified ESI resellers and is well priced.

Tell us what sort of traffic you have between the sites ... it obviously fluctuates but fill us in on the following ...

is there separate dial tone to all 3 sites or are they all getting dial tone from one site?

if it is all from one site then you need to see how many lines are in use at each of the remote sites

how much traffic is there from intercom and transferred calls

are any, and if so how many extensions are "published" ?

And ... do you have a CS200 or an IP 200 or 200E?

Do you have any local IP Phones at the main site?

Thanks Steve. It really didn't tell much more than I already knew. I am looking for something that goes in more depth.

I have quite a few locations ESI-Linked and remote phones or a combination of both. The systems I have work fine and the only time I have ever experienced a "Voice Quality" problem is when the internet has had issues.
We use the internet which in most cases is not as good (public network) as what you have (Point to Point T1)

Use the link below for a more in depth test of your connection. Keep in mind that this test should be done while you are experiencing the problem. Run the test multiple times.

https://www.voipreview.org/voipspeedtester.aspx

When you say sound quality is "poor" what do you mean??????

Do you hear echo? are calls getting dropped? Is there a volume problem??

Are phone conversations at the host good, or are they too poor?

What are you using at the host for dial tone? (SIP, POTS, PRI T1, or dial tone provided via the internet like a cable company)

I bet you have a bandwidth problem.
If calls are good at the host you can eliminate the card that interfaces to your dial tone service(PRI card, SIP card or Analog trunk card)

If the Point to Point T1 checks out, the next thing I would do is replace the IVC card.

This problem is definitely fixable, and identifiable, you just need someone that has the experience to trouble shoot this.

If you provide more info, I can help you figure out the problem.

Walter

Also confirm you have a CS200 also tell me how long ago it was installed and has the problem been there from day 1???

Whatever happened here? I am curious to see what the results were. My guess is that Youtube and streaming music was the culprit!!! That is if they were sharing the data pipe with voice. Did the remote all have CS systems or were there a combination of E class and CS systems? It seemed that Mike M knows networking? By the way, the network assement is cheap and works great. Just did a five site with seven remotes at each with (60) at the main and the analysis showed postive results for the capacity! I just wished we could minimize the packet size and keep the quality. Oh yeah...use MPLS or forget it!