VoIP Spear Blog: News & Noise
Feb 25, 2021

What is VoIP Spear?

VoIP Spear is a web service that assists when you’re having voice quality issues on your phone calls. We monitor your internet connection and track the reasons your problems occurred.

VoIP Spear has been operating for more than 12 years and has helped tens of thousands of users with their voice quality issues.

The Problem

The internet is a packet-based network system, meaning that it splits data up into thousands of small chunks called packets. Most of the time, the internet performs well and the packets reach their destination properly, however sometimes that isn’t the case.

Services like email and web traffic have mechanisms to deal with imperfections with the internet connection. Unfortunately, voice calls are extremely sensitive to these issues and this is what causes your frustration.

Most voice quality issues are intermittent – they occur only some of the time. Even an issue occurring on fewer than 1% of packets can cause an issue for voice quality. The intermittent nature of these issues means that the issue isn’t occurring by the time you call up your service provider. It’s extra frustrating for you because they can’t see the problem you experienced, and it’s extra frustrating for them because they’d like nothing more than to help you.

The Solution

VoIP Spear helps solve your voice quality issues by monitoring your internet connection 24x7x365. It monitors even when you’re not on a call so it can catch all the problems occurring.

VoIP Spear tracks different characteristics of your internet connection and your service provider can use this information to help them troubleshoot the issue. Your data is available to see using simple interactive charts.

MOS Chart

We use industry standards to grade your voice quality between 1 and 5. For phone calls in North America, anything above a 4 is acceptable.

Should you need to take a deeper dive into your issues, VoIP Spear has reports that can be very illuminating. In addition, you can have VoIP Spear send you alerts when you’re having an issue.

Software Solution

VoIP Spear’s basic solution is an all-software implementation to monitor your internet connection. It’s very easy to set up – all you need to do is enter your IP address and we’ll do the rest.

VoIP Spear customers have been using the all-software solution for 12 years.

VoIP Spear Sentries

MOS Chart

VoIP Spear's new Sentry device

We have recently introduced a hardware device that monitors your voice quality. We call it a Sentry.

The Sentries are small, about the size of a computer mouse, and very easy to install. You simply plug them into your internet connection and into power using the provided the cables.

The hardware Sentries produce more reliable results under a wider range of conditions than our all-software solution.

More specifically, the hardware Sentries monitor packet loss, jitter, and latency on your internet connection rather than monitoring individual phone calls. This is more secure and also allows the Sentries to discover potential problems even when you’re not on a phone call.

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