Pricing Schedule Overview Search

Total Network Visibility Blog

The Top Five Myths About VoIP Call Quality, Part Five: The Sniffer Will Fix It

Sep 28, 2016

magnifying glassIf there’s one lesson you can take away from our recent series on the top VoIP call quality myths, it’s that you can’t take a cavalier approach to VoIP troubleshooting and expect strong results. Problems tend to arise when network or voice professionals think they have the right technologies in place, only to find out the hard way that they are using the wrong tools.

That brings us to the final myth, which is one we encounter often: If you run into call quality issues, you can use a packet sniffer to solve them.

What’s the problem with this strategy? Well, think about how a fire alarm works. On one hand, a fire alarm can let you know when your house is burning. But the fire alarm won’t tell you where the fire is, or what’s causing it. It sure won’t put the fire out.

To learn more, download our white paper:  The Root-Cause of VoIP Call Quality Problems

A packet sniffer works the same way in that it will confirm you have a problem somewhere on your network. It will let you know when packets are dropping during calls, or when latency and jitter are occurring. But the sniffer will leave the hard work of locating the root cause up to you. For this reason, there’s really only one reason to use a packet sniffer—to prove to your boss that there are underlying issues in the network that are causing call problems.

The question then becomes, what do you do after you confirm that your network is suffering from call quality problems? The old-fashioned approach to network troubleshooting is to roll up your sleeves and start manually looking for problems. This can take a great deal of time, pulling you away from other pressing issues in your data center.

There’s a much easier way to go about VoIP troubleshooting, and that is by automating the process using TotalView from PathSolutions. TotalView won’t just tell you that your network is having issues, like a packet sniffer will. It will tell you where these problems are located (across all areas of the network including the physical layer) and how your technicians should solve them.

As we explained in a recent blog post, TotalView is unlike any network troubleshooting solution on the market.  It’s the first VoIP and network performance management solution, for instance, that can automatically detect the number of QoS queues that are in use. And it can actually track data over individual call paths for advanced VoIP monitoring. Plus, TotalView offers a real-time map of the network along with daily reports detailing the health and status of every device you are using. It’s a remarkable platform that can save you boatloads of time, while also reducing risk on your network.

So thanks for reading our series on the top VoIP call quality myths. Now, it’s time to take action. Stop playing guess and check with VoIP troubleshooting, and leave the process up to TotalView. 

Watch the video walkthrough on VoIP/UC monitoring

share this: