Compared to regular phone lines, Voice Over IP (VoIP) technology has a lot of advantages.
VoIP eliminates the need for separate Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) hardware, which means that voice calls can be made over the Internet, which is an essential part of almost every business. This has many benefits, such as lower costs, more flexibility, and the ability to connect calls to other internet-based business apps.
Both service providers and their users must monitor how the network works to make sure calls are clear. Most of the time, this is explained in a Quality of Service (quality of service) plan or Service Level Agreement (SLA).
But where do you find the info to make sure the network works at the level that was agreed upon?
To understand and fix network problems, VoIP monitoring tools are essential. It would be best if you took the time to find the correct high-level answer for your needs because many are made for different markets and offer different features. Here is an overview of eight of the best sound monitoring software options you should think about.
Role of Voice Monitoring in the Age of VoIP
Voice services are still growing, even though new ways to communicate have come out. This is good news for both consumers and businesses.
The State of the Call 2022 study from Hiya shows that voice is the best way to communicate for essential business tasks like solving customer problems, making appointments, and closing sales. The data in the study shows that for about 90% of businesses and consumers, voice calls have gone up or stayed the same:
The bad thing about VoIP is that bad call quality quickly cancels out its advantages. Many parts of the network work together to make calls and send and receive data over the Internet. There is much room for errors, such as lost packets, high delay, network jitters, etc.
Even though the market is still strong, customers have more options and better standards than ever. More people leave the telecom business than any other, with nearly half of US customers saying they quit a product because the service wasn’t good enough.
This is why voice tracking tools have become crucial for businesses that want to keep and get new customers in a crowded market. VoIP is also being used in many new situations, so service providers need to figure out how to change with the times while keeping their level of service high.
A lot of the time, this means making sure that both the control plane and the media plane can be seen clearly. Signal monitoring and the connection between the people on the call are essential parts of the past of telephones.
But because media is now sent over IP networks that are getting more complicated, service providers need to make sure they have the tools and metrics also to watch RTP streams.
Best Voice Monitoring Software Solutions
#1) Voipfuture Qrystal (Recommended)
Best for cloud-based voice providers, communication service providers, wholesalers, businesses, call centres, and people who want help with root-cause analysis and quality assurance.
Voipfuture’s Qrystal offers flexible tracking and analytics that are focused on the experience of the end customer. The company’s unique technology lets you see both SIP and RTP data at the same time, so you can make sure they are both working correctly.
Qrystal looks at each packet individually to find patterns of damage. This speeds up the process of finding and fixing problems.
Voipfuture also offers RTP time-slicing to make it easier to gather and compare important call data. Operations can correctly and effectively keep track of KPIs across calls to improve root-cause analysis and fix customer issues.
Benefits:
- Voice tracking services that are flexible and include quality assurance and root-cause analysis are designed to make the customer experience better.
- Superior information through packet-by-packet analysis.
- One option that lets you see both the control plan and the media plan at the same time.
- Automatic fix for all problems on both planes.
- A pay-as-you-grow model for scalable prices.
Verdict: Voipfuture Qrystal provides complete tracking and analytics to help providers offer the best voice services possible.
Website: Voipfuture Qrystal
#2) NETSCOUT
It is best for big communication service providers that need to look at signals in great detail.
The nGeniusONE assurance system from NETSCOUT gives service providers real-time, deep insights into call signalling. You can provide reliable, high-performance VoIP services if you can see more of your IP network and keep an eye on it constantly.
Use a correlated view of call flow to quickly find the cause of call setup problems, long setup delays, and other issues, even when the signalling paths are complicated.
Businesses can use NETSCOUT to quickly find and fix problems to meet customer needs and avoid costly service interruptions.
Benefits:
- Cut down on the meantime to fix (MRRT) by a significant amount
- Better sight in the control plane
- Early discovery of problems
- Fewer service breaks
- Making sure that service level agreements (SLAs) are followed
Verdict: NETSCOUT’s VoIP assurance products give you real-time network visibility to help make sure your customers have a good experience.
Website: NETSCOUT
#3) Oracle
It is best for businesses and smaller service providers that must keep an eye on fixed-line call services and use Oracle session border controllers.
Oracle Communications Operations Monitor with VoIP Monitoring provides helpful information about your network. Oracle helps teams quickly find and fix issues with VoIP call signalling and handling by giving them several tools.
This includes analytics for the whole network with real-time KPIs and statistics (like R-factor and MOS), visibility at the packet level to decode and fix problems, the ability to track back data for a single call, live user search, and more. Companies can set up alarms for network problems and find the source of problems with the help of advanced tools.
Oracle’s solution can also be combined with Oracle session border controls.
Benefits:
- Better service because problems can be found before they harm the customer.
- Troubleshooting tools that work well in real-time, not after the fact.
- Software-based tools that can be used in the cloud or on-premises.
- Because it includes Oracle Communications scams and Monitor, it makes it easy to find and stop phone scams.
Verdict: Oracle Voice Tracking Software, a big name in technology, has a lot of network tracking services that can help you fix problems with VoIP call quality and routing.
Website: Oracle
#4) VIAVI
It works best for big service providers that want a complete testing and monitoring suite that focuses on signalling and application speed.
With VIAVI’s Service Assurance product, you can use analytics to monitor and improve VoIP networks. Businesses can reach their goals and give customers a great experience with machine learning technology that can be accessed through a cloud-native platform.
Service Assurance is a set of rules, procedures, and tools that help network owners keep an eye on their network, the services it runs, and the quality of service it gives to users. Businesses can get to and look at the data they need to learn more about their network thanks to VIAVI’s analytics tool, NITRO Mobile.
Benefits:
- Seeing all IMS/LTE connections to fix problems and send reports.
- A place where you can get visual displays of certain KPIs and alarms all in one place.
- A map view that shows where the affected users are.
- This is an excellent correlation tool for signalling.
Verdict: This is a reliable machine learning-based cloud-native solution for monitoring and enhancing VoIP networks.
Website: VIAVI
#5) Elisa Polystar
This is the best option for service providers who want to see voice services in real-time from start to finish.
OSIX from Elisa Polystar lets you watch a network and analyse protocols in great detail, which is needed to find and fix signalling problems. OSIX is an end-to-end system that helps keep service quality high by letting service providers find and fix problems before they have a significant impact on customers.
Benefits:
- Advanced tracking of the whole network ensures customers have a good experience.
- Root-cause analysis that digs deep into the protocol to get data that can be used to make the service better.
- A MediaProbe is used to do real-time monitoring from the control and user plan on a wide range of network technologies.
- Automated alarms to find problems early.
- Elisa Polystar has a set of programs that can be used to check and fix network problems.
Website: Elisa Polystar
#6) VoIPmonitor
This is the best open-source tool for businesses and regional CSPs that want to listen in on speech calls in small fixed networks.
The VoIPmonitor tool is free and can be used to monitor VoIP services on a Linux network. It can guess the quality of a call by looking at things like delay changes, data loss, and so on.
VoIPmonitor can be used to keep track of and store important network data that can be used to check on performance and find problems. VoIPmonitor is used by VoIP service companies, businesses, and call centres because it works with many different protocols and transports.
Benefits:
- Users can check the sound of SIP VoIP calls, fix problems, and save recordings.
- It can handle thousands of calls at the same time on a single computer.
- Keeps you safe from scam calls and follows police rules.
Verdict: These are open-source solid tools that can be used to check call quality and fix VoIP problems in fixed networks.
Website: VoIPmonitor
#7) EXFO
It is best for carriers that need a set of modular options for service assurance to test and keep an eye on mobile voice services.
Nova Core is a passive monitoring system for circuit-switched and mobile networks that is fully virtualized. It gives security for hybrid networks, the core, and the RAN simultaneously. Nova Core and Nova RAN work together to offer end-to-end geo-located data and troubleshooting from a single interface.
Other parts of the Nova suite offer AI data, full-cycle troubleshooting, information about the user experience, and a lot more. Nova Active, for instance, offers tests widely used to keep an eye on network elements, systems, and third-party platforms.
Benefits:
- A scalable way to keep an eye on mobile networks from multiple vendors.
- Cloud-native design that has been used in the field and microservices-based probes.
- Full KQIs for signalling for in-depth customer experience data.
- Look for and figure out problems with 5G coverage, hand-off, roaming, portability, quality of experience, and data throughput.
Verdict: This is a passive probing option for monitoring how customers use virtualized mobile networks and services.
Website: EXFO
#8) Anritsu
Large communication service providers who want a system that can be expanded or contracted and modified to their specifications would benefit the most from this solution.
With its MasterClaw Monitoring system, Anritsu lets you see what’s happening with your network, service, and customers. MasterClaw Monitoring can be used for both natural and virtualized networks. It has troubleshooting tools to help teams keep an eye on their network, from the big picture to the smallest details.
MasterClaw creates KPIs based on your needs, cuts down on MTTR, and boosts business efficiency.
Benefits:
- More advanced troubleshooting from beginning to end to understand sound quality in both the signalling and user planes.
- MasterClaw’s non-intrusive probes make tracking of multi-vendor networks easier, no matter what kind of equipment is being used.
- You can change the level of tracking to fit your needs from a single node to the whole network.
- Dynamic smart alerts that self-adjust automatically to tell you of malicious network traffic.
Verdict: MasterClaw Monitoring lets service companies see their network, their services, and how their customers feel about them.
Website: Anritsu
Conclusion
A lot of companies need to make sure their customers are happy by giving them great call quality. In this day and age of VoIP, this means finding a complete and useful voice monitoring solution or tool that can give you real-time information on network speed and find problems before they affect end users.
There are a lot of VoIP tracking tools that say they can do everything, but they don’t really improve the customer experience.
This piece talks about eight Voice Monitoring Software options that can give you useful data and analytics to improve the performance of your network. If you look into it some more, we think you’ll be able to find a great answer for both you and your customers.
