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does hold music interfere with internet traffic

It's the hold music. VOIP bandwidth is dynamic. When there is no voice (or sound) passing over the "connection" then the bandwidth that had been carrying the voice (Muzak) information is available to carry other information (i.e., data). In systems designed to give voice traffic priority (aka QOS meaning Quality Of Service such as 802.1p/q) enough VOIP traffic can bring "surfing" literally to a standstill. However, I know of no such VOIP system that supports QOS across the public Internet, so worst case the VOIP traffic will simply be competing for the same pool of bandwidth that your surfing is competing for. That of course means than not only can "Muzak" (or an actual conversation) slow down surfing, but surfing can also destroy the quality of the call, making it unintelligible gibberish.

Reply to
Mitel Lurker <wdg
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When I'm on hold the "musak" keeps the line busy and surfing the internet bogs down. Am I right that it is the Musak or is it the phone call all by itself?

- RM

Reply to
Rick Merrill

Depending on the codec the most bandwidth your IP phone should be stealing is 64kbit/sec downstream and very little much else upstream. I'm assuming you're either on a dialup or maybe ISDN or a really really really long loop dsl :)

Also depending on your voice product (you didn't list it) unless you have it bundled with say your cable modem service, etc there is no GOS for QOS for the "last mile". And many VOIP providers that have "voip in a box" that you buy at Best Buy, etc are traversing the public internet (as Mitel Lurker mentioned) and as such all traffic is best-effort.

You need more bandwidth, if you can get it. I can make two simultaneous voip calls and do whatever I want with my Comcast internet acct. and I have never had any problems. Thats 6mbit/sec down and

2mbit/sec up (standard Comcast BW for most areas).
Reply to
fotoobscura

Voice-Over-IP doesn't imply any specific form of Internet connection. You could have a 300 baud modem and be using VOIP :) (well, try to at least).

Sounds like your voice traffic may be actually getting *less* priority than your data traffic- i've seen providers do this, especially ones that are setting up QOS on their network for a voip migration and want to start encouraging people they shouldn't be using outside providers :)

Check out one of those online speed testers and report back with your results.

Also, if you're nailing your connection to the wall- e.g. P2P applications or using download accelerators/managers then what you

*can* do if you want is create priority for specific traffic on your machine itself...I think Windows has a way of doing it- on Unix there are a hundred ways.
Reply to
fotoobscura

Nope, this is "..voice-over-ip": I have broadband, or was that a smiley?

When I place two simultaneous calls, download speed slows.

Reply to
Rick Merrill

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