Frequently Asked Question
My audio is choppy
Last Updated 5 years ago
Choppy calls resemble using your mobile phone in a poor cell coverage area, where bits and pieces "break up", or even go totally quiet for a second or few.
The typical cause of this is lack of bandwidth, perhaps everyone's using your internet connection, or windows update has decided it will do its thing, or everyone's on Netflix, even though your average G711 aLaw codec call is using around 90 kb/s each way and you might have 100mbps FTTP or FTTC, the likelihood of your consumer grade router able to give you a fair time slice is pretty low and will affect your call whether you use a hardware VoIP phone, or softphone such as MicroSIP (https://www.microsip.org/downloads) or Zoiper (https://zoiper.com/)
You should however try setting QOS in your modem, in some cases it can help.
If you're not using your internet connection but still have choppy calls, try a speed test, most of these will also return a ping result, anything above 100ms may indicate a congestion issue, observe if you can your router or switch LEDs, see if they are going berserk, it's possible you might have a compromised PC or device, if it all looks normal, it's possible the problem might be with your upstream, their upstream, NBN or Carrier backbone, or even your SIP provider.
Other possible causes are, if using a softphone, PC or device resource loading is very high.
Speed/Network Tests
https://zonecheck.org/its.php (Ping/Traceroute)
https://www.speedtest.net (Speed and Latency, recommended)
https://fast.com (Speed and Latency, seems less reliable)
The typical cause of this is lack of bandwidth, perhaps everyone's using your internet connection, or windows update has decided it will do its thing, or everyone's on Netflix, even though your average G711 aLaw codec call is using around 90 kb/s each way and you might have 100mbps FTTP or FTTC, the likelihood of your consumer grade router able to give you a fair time slice is pretty low and will affect your call whether you use a hardware VoIP phone, or softphone such as MicroSIP (https://www.microsip.org/downloads) or Zoiper (https://zoiper.com/)
You should however try setting QOS in your modem, in some cases it can help.
If you're not using your internet connection but still have choppy calls, try a speed test, most of these will also return a ping result, anything above 100ms may indicate a congestion issue, observe if you can your router or switch LEDs, see if they are going berserk, it's possible you might have a compromised PC or device, if it all looks normal, it's possible the problem might be with your upstream, their upstream, NBN or Carrier backbone, or even your SIP provider.
Other possible causes are, if using a softphone, PC or device resource loading is very high.
Speed/Network Tests
https://zonecheck.org/its.php (Ping/Traceroute)
https://www.speedtest.net (Speed and Latency, recommended)
https://fast.com (Speed and Latency, seems less reliable)