VoIP From the Ground Up
A 10-part series covering everything from how traditional phone calls work to diagnosing VoIP quality problems. Start here if you want to understand voice quality from first principles.
How Does a Phone Call Actually Work?
How the traditional phone system works: circuit switching, copper wires, and the PSTN explained as a foundation for VoIP.
What Is a Network, and Why Should You Care?
How local networks differ from the internet, what the shared medium means for traffic, and why this matters when your office runs VoIP.
Packets: How Data Actually Moves
All internet data travels in packets. How packets work, TCP vs UDP, and why the difference matters for VoIP call quality.
Why Your Network Is Good Enough for Everything Except Phone Calls
Voice traffic is uniquely demanding. Why latency, jitter, and packet loss affect real-time audio far more than web browsing, email, or file transfers.
What Is VoIP, Really?
VoIP turns your voice into packets sent over the internet in real time. The step-by-step process from microphone to speaker, and why quality varies.
Your Local Network: The Part You Control
Your local network is the one part of the VoIP path you fully control. Switches, cabling, Wi-Fi, and configuration that affect call quality.
The Internet: The Part You Don't Control
Voice packets cross ISP last miles, peering points, and transit networks you do not control. How each hop introduces latency, jitter, and loss.
Latency, Jitter, and Packet Loss: The Details
Deep dive into latency, jitter, and packet loss: how each metric works, how they interact, and what they mean for VoIP calls.
Quality of Service: Telling Your Network What Matters
QoS can prioritize voice on your local network, but it has real limitations. Learn what DSCP marking actually does, where it stops working, and when you need it.
How to Tell Where the Problem Actually Is
A systematic framework for diagnosing bad VoIP calls, walking through five network segments from endpoint to provider.