Wide Area Measurements of Voice Over IP Quality

Time, day, location and instantaneous network conditions largely dictate the quality of Voice over IP calls. In this paper we present the results of over 18000 VoIP measurements, taken from nine sites connected in a full-mesh configuration. We measure the quality of the routes on a hourly basis by transmitting a pre-recorded call between a pair of sites. We repeat the procedure for all nine sites during the one hour interval. Based on the obtained jitter, delay and loss values as defined in RFC 1889 (RTP) we conclude that the VoIP quality is acceptable for all but one of the nine sites we tested. We also conclude that VoIP quality has improved marginally since we last conducted a similar study in 1998