Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : VOIP etc : VoIP and bandwith

[Renard Fin]

Just as a general question, what would be the minimum speed a user would need to have a good quality of VoIP you think ? Like on a 3meg connection, how many k's will the VoIP use ?

Also, what would be the usage of the VoIP per month in bandwith ? I assume that if the user do not use the telephone the VoIP wont use bandwith but as an example (as we need numbers), for about 20hours of conversations, how much bandwith average would that use ?

Thanks

[luki]

The bandwidth depends on the selected codec. G711 is equivalent to PSTN quality and uses 64 kbps + overhead, so realistically about 80 kbps or ~10 KB/sec. G726 is also a good choice and lets you get away with ~6 KB/sec. G729 is highly compressed and you can get away with 4 KB/sec. But I personally don't like it as it sounds very dull.

A majority of provides use G711 so for that 20 hour of call time would be about 700 MB of data in either direction (10 KB/sec * 60 sec/min * 60 min/hr * 20 hr).

[The Dude]

How about the SPEEX codec??

This program uses that and sounds pretty good

[HRBrendan]

In our experience, you will want ~85-90 kbps per call for G711.u, which is the codec you will want to be running if you are using it as a drop in replacement for a land line.

-Brendan

[The Dude]

Anyway to have the above program i listed use a different codec than the one it uses???

[transops]

It also depends on the load or how many phones are connected to your server. With a 1MEG connection, our server can carry up to 20 to 30 calls all together.

What is your opinion on ASTERISK VOIP?