VoIP phones often get bad press because of connection problems. However, this is normally nothing to do with the phone or the phone system so let’s try and explain this.

SIP or VoIP phones connect to the phone system using a normal network connection. If the phones and the phone system are on the same local network, e.g. in the same office, then the connection will be very reliable and you should rarely get any problems. The issue arises when the phones and the phone system are connected via the internet, as with cloud phone systems or remote extensions.

The first problem is that your internet connection may not be that reliable or fast which can cause connection problems. You also need to bear in mind that if you are using your internet for other things, such as downloading films, then there may not be enough left for your phone. Internet connection problems manifest themselves in dropped calls, robotic speech and inbound calls not ringing. This can be solved using Quality of Service (QOS) which attempts to prioritise the data from your phone so it gets first use of the internet before everything else. Whether you can use QOS depends on the type of router you are using and you will need to speak to whomever deals with your IT. If your internet is not fast enough or reliable then you will need to speak to your internet provider.

The next issue is caused by the fact that your phone may be on a network which is behind a NAT firewall. Don’t worry about the technical side but this covers most office and home networks. The router can cause havoc with the data sent from your phone and prevent the phone system from being able to connect to it. You can normally tell that this is happening when your phone works for a while and then stops receiving calls or shows up as “Unreachable” on our phone system.

We have introduced a feature to try and solve this called STUN. STUN attempts to help the phone and the phone system talk to each other through your router so that it does not go “Unreachable”. To set up STUN on your phone you just need to add our STUN server address into your phone’s settings and change the setting that tells it to use STUN. The STUN server address can be found by logging into your Rosetta Telecom account. After that you should have no problems with getting through your router although we still can’t sort your internet connection out!