Is Your Network Ready for DobsonUC?

Dobson Fiber offers a Prequal/Troubleshooting Tool that can be run from a Windows PC within your network to help determine your network's readiness to support a product like our DobsonUC Hosted PBX.

The purpose of this program is to simulate call traffic across your network to ours, so it would be important to run this test during a typical or heavy use business time. 

For example, testing it at 2AM when everyone has gone and no one is using your network, may yield different results than at 8AM when everyone is downloading their daily work.   

Feel free to run it during different parts of the day over multiple days to get a better aspect of your network's overall readiness. Also, this is testing directly to Dobson's access points, not anything generic. So if you have any firewall settings blocking IPs, you may need to contact us if you need to know our access information to allow the traffic. 

These results DO NOT guarantee performance (good or bad) but are a way to help measure and identify potential problems. Running the test multiple times at different points during the day over multiple days will build a more complete picture of the performance level.

System requirements for the Tool

The DobsonUC Tool runs on Windows computers only (not Mac). The Windows computer must have the following:

• Windows 7 or later

• 2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM

• Close down any unnecessary programs running on the PC at time of test

• Should avoid testing via WIFI connections to get the most accurate results

The installer includes the necessary JVM so no Java configuration is required.

Running the Tool

You can download it via a web browser on to a suitable Windows desktop system using the button below.

After installing and launching the program (it does take a couple minutes to open) you will then see the following screen:

You should enter your Company Name on the top line. You can also add a Company ID, or your Location ID,  if you are running it from multiple locations. It is important to complete at least the top field so that the test results can subsequently be identified by us for any follow-up questions.  You can use the other fields to add more descriptions (ie THURSDAY AM, or OKC Office PM).

Once you click Start Test, the Tool will run, and should take up to five minutes to complete. You will see two progress bars while the test runs, but can continue to use your computer as normal while the test runs in the background.

Once the test has completed, you will see a screen showing a summary of the test results. If the test passes, it will display the number of concurrent calls that can be supported in the network before audio quality fails at that specific time of the test. 

Again, this is only a snapshot of performance during the specific time of the test, and therefore is only a tool to help identify your network's capacity. During different network circumstances, your results may vary. A single good or bad result does not guarantee the estimated performance level all the time, so repeating the test can help identify better trends to give a more accurate result. 

A lower than "... at least 10 concurrent calls" does not rule out service availability but just may indicated limitations were reached during that testing at that particular time and may need to be investigated further. Network modifications can make big changes in measure results.

You should click Close to close the tool on your computer when finished. You can report your test results to your Account Manager or Support Technician, along with the Company Name, Company ID, and Location ID you used. 

Also run the test again at several different times to get a better picture of your network connection. We store test results for less than a week, so any follow-up with us will need to be done within that time or we may ask that you run the test again.

After reviewing your results, your account manager may give you a MOS score:

 MOS= Mean Opinion Score for VoIP Testing

Mean Opinion Score or MOS assigns a score (1.0-5.0) to indicate the call quality after it is transmitted and compressed using codecs. The result is a measurement that can be useful in predicting call quality.

For instance, if a test average MOS score is 3.5, then one might expect up to 50% of users will complain of experiencing poor voice quality at that moment. Currently calls using other service providers can have averages in the 3.5-4.2 MOS range. A 5.0 score is generally unheard of, as it is considered perfect and has been compared to in-person, face-to-face conversations. 

The following chart provides MOS comparison values and can be used as a simple tool for judging voice quality.  Different entities may interpret the scores different ways, so this is just a suggested scale.

What affects VoIP MOS scores?

MOS is a relative scale and there are many factors that can affect voice quality such as bandwidth, codec, hardware, jitter, latency, and packet loss.

Propagation Delay:  the time it takes for a digital signal to travel from start to finish over the entire network, including traveling through routers, switches, and firewalls. The greater the distance, the greater the propagation delay.  

Packetization Delay:  the time it takes to digitize the signal based on the codec used as it’s sent over the internet and decoded at the end. A more compressed codec like G.729 has a higher packetization delay than a non-compressed codec, like G.711.