When it comes to business voice, saving money is nice but voice quality and reliability are paramount. At Bandwidth.com, we make sure our network is robust and reliable for VoIP (it’s the only purpose-built nationwide VoIP network out there, in fact). But we don’t like leaving anything to chance… which is why we urge our customers to use an edge device on their network for VoIP deployments. We even include an EdgeMarc (for SIP) or AdTran (for analog/digital handoffs) device as part of our BoxSet VoIP bundles for business.

Here’s why VoIP specific edge devices are a smart idea:

Voice Quality
These VoIP specific devices act as Quality of Service routers that actually shape traffic on your IP network to optimize voice quality. Most VoIP quality issues are due to bad IP traffic patterns on your network (someone watching a YouTube video is making you sound like a robot on the phone!). A VoIP edge device solves this problem.

Disaster Recovery
VoIP specific routers, like the EdgeMarc, support something called DNS-SRV records, which store paths to multiple Bandwidth.com gateways for automatic failover. If your data network experiences any issues or outages, a VoIP edge device can look for alternate network paths to maintain your voice service.

PBX Security
Your phone system (PBX) is simply an application running on a server… and it can be hacked (please use good password practices and change it frequently). While your network may have great security, VoIP edge devices add an extra layer by acting as an ALG (Application Layer Gateway) which aids in NAT traversal and will allow you to keep your PBX on a private IP. Additionally, the edge device dynamically opens and closes ports needed for voice traffic, so that nothing is left open when it’s not needed. That means your PBX and your network are less likely to be hacked.

Better Support Experience
Bandwidth.com’s support is great, but it helps when we have good data. Voice-specific edge devices provide real-time quality scores of Voice traffic on your network (using MOS scoring). This, along with the traffic data inside the box, allows our support team to better diagnose problems and get resolutions faster.

How have you used an EdgeMarc or similar device to make VoIP more reliable? Leave your story in the comments.

Tags: adtran, edgemarc, QoS, reliability, SIP, SIP trunking, support