Safety First: here’s how to ensure a fast and secure network connection 

WhatsApp, Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams: you are available online all day for your customers and colleagues. Naturally, it’s vital that your tools work optimally and are secure. But did you know that you can influence this quite a bit? Check what you can do today to improve your network connection. 

Good to know: calling with Voys makes use of VoIP. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, or simply, calling through the internet. The big advantage of VoIP is that it provides you the opportunity to work flexibly. You call with your usual number, but from wherever and whenever you want. 

For this you’ll need two things:

1. A phone or laptop that supports VoIP, such as a desktop phone, our app, the Webphone, or our Microsoft Teams-integration. 
2. A stable and secure internet connection.

This is what you need for a good and secure connection through VoIP

Overall most places in Europe have a high quality internet connection,especially in the Netherlands and in Belgium. So, in the vast majority of cases, you make a crystal-clear call when calling with VoIP.

But crystal clear audio while calling is not enough. A secure telephone system is top priority, as this doesn’t only affect your own company, but also the customers with whom you’re calling. 

At Voys we work very hard to ensure your security. But, there are also a few things you can do yourself to make your VoIP connection high-quality and super secure. We’d like to explain them to you now.

Set up your routers and firewalls properly

Without a good router you’ll get nowhere. 

For locations with fewer than five workstations, you’ll come a long way with the router you get from your internet provider for a good quality stable network connection. Connect your desk phone, Voys App, or Webphone to the standard router supplied by your internet provider and you’re good to go. (The FRITZ!-box router in particular is a real winner!)

For security, always connect a VoIP phone behind a router. Then the device cannot be accessed by malicious people from outside the router network. (Also not by people with good intentions, by the way.)

Why? Most routers have firewall functionality. A firewall checks incoming and outgoing internet traffic. A firewall stops questionable traffic and thus protects your network. We really recommend using a firewall. How you set up the firewall varies from router to router. You can find the general settings for your firewall on our help pages.

For fixed devices, it is possible to set up the VoIP-account to connect to our servers only from a certain network location. You can think of this as an extra security measure.

If you prefer to use your own router, e.g. because you have more workstations,then remember to turn off SIP ALG. This is not necessary for our services and sometimes even causes problems.

Avoid network problems by Double-NAT

A router translates between an internal network (LAN, your office network for example) and an external network (WAN, the Internet). The moment you connect your network equipment, such as computers, printers and phones, to a router that is in turn connected to another router, things go wrong.

Why is that? The translation from an internal to an external network takes place twice. This can cause no sound to be sent with the call, for example.

We call this problem Double-NAT. NAT stands for Network Address Translation. We find that this is the most common network problem among our customers.

Fortunately, there is a solution:

• Connect your router to the first router in your building. 
• Put the first router in  bridge-mode.

In bridge mode, you can leave the physical network situation as it is, but NAT no longer takes place on the first router. This way, you solve the problem structurally. Your internet provider can often do this remotely for you.

Connect a switch for additional network ports

Do you have more devices than network ports? Then connect a switch to your router. You immediately have access to additional network ports.

An additional advantage: many switches these days use Power of Ethernet. Power of Ethernet means that the power supply of the device you want to connect goes via the ethernet cable. So, no more fiddling with charging cables. All VoIP phones we supply support this feature.\

So: plug the cable in  directly into the router or into a switch, and dial away. 

Most desktop devices do not support WiFi. The WiFi adapter in the desk devices that do support WiFi are not nearly as stable as a wired connection.

Good to remember: our web-phone and app of course do work as usual with a WiFi connection.

Compare the quality of 4G/5G and WiFi with each other

The webphone and our app work great over a good WiFi connection. Still, it’s smart to compare your WiFi with the quality of your 4G/5G connection. Because even if the WiFi is fine by itself, there are sometimes factors at play that cause the quality to drop.

These factors could be things like the placement of the WiFi router, the construction of the building where you work, the WiFi channels, and your own phone’s settings, all which affect the quality of your WiFi.

If you experience problems, try switching your smartphone to 4G/5G or connect your laptop by cable and test out the webphone that way. If it runs smoothly then, you’ll have a quick solution to get back to worry-free calling.

Never, ever use public WiFi connections if you want to make VoIP calls. Or better, don’t do this anyway. The GDPR has some convincing reasons for this.

Consider a 4G/5G-router 

If it turns out that WiFi is indeed a problem when making VoIP calls, then buying a 4G/5G router is worth considering. This is common in outlying areas, but sometimes also in new business parks.

It’s super frustrating when you can’t make a normal VoIP-call. Or even worse: when calling doesn’t work at all. A 4G/5G router solves this problem for you.

Get a WiFi-bridge installed professionally

Professionally constructed WiFi bridges can be a good solution and fundamentally they work fine. For example, consider a WiFi bridge from your office to your shed or workshop. Ask a reputable company to help you with this.

A WiFi bridge you buy and install yourself works extremely poorly in practice. A WiFi bridge is not a solution for your telephony either, as many desk phones work poorly on WiFi. If you experience problems, it is better to connect your telephony to a wired connection.

Leave powerline adapters in the store

Do you know them? Those adapters that you plug into the wall socket and make sure your internet is picked up via power grid through any outlet?

Just leave those in the store, because they don’t work at all. 

Power cables are not suitable carriers for data traffic, because they are not designed for that. If you just want to surf the internet, your page might open a split second later, but as soon as you use VoIP telephony, things go wrong. Calls falter and you have no sound.

Always use good Cat5e or Cat6 UTP cables for your in-house network.

Do you have any questions about network connection? 

Are you struggling or running into problems despite these tips? Take a look at our help pages, where you can also easily schedule a phone appointment with one of my colleagues.