Network Setup & Quality of Service
Learn how your network configuration affects call quality in CircleLoop. This guide covers how Quality of Service (QoS) works, how to prioritise VoIP traffic, and the recommended network configuration to help ensure clear and reliable calls.
VoIP calls and your network
Everyone wants their calls to be crystal clear and reliable, with VoIP (Voice over internet protocol), this is heavily dependant on how your network is setup to handle VoIP traffic.
Many internet service providers (ISP) advertise super fast speeds which definitely help ensure that you have a lot of bandwidth to hand but actually only plays a small part in the quality of your calls.
What is more important is how your router is prioritising the VoIP traffic on your network so that it isn't interrupted by other traffic, causing call instability and poor quality audio. In many cases, this is handled by a feature called Quality of Service (QoS), this looks at the different types of traffic on your network and prioritises those that require a small amount of guaranteed bandwidth available (VoIP) over those that will use up all the bandwidth available leaving very little for the other traffic (media downloads & streaming).
Here is a short video that explains in a bit more depth - https://help.circleloop.com/video-quality-of-service-explained
Quality of Service Settings
Please refer to your router's instruction manual when applying the following settings and remember to always backup your current settings before making any changes. If you're not familiar with network management then please take advice from somebody who understands your network before applying any changes.
Our applications use WebRTC processes and therefore signalling for calls is performed over standard web ports (80 and 443). Unlike traditional VoIP solutions which often use SIP for signalling, there's no additional ports which typically need to be opened on your network.
IP Addresses and UDP Ports
The most reliable way to ensure CircleLoop call audio traffic is prioritised within your local network is configure QoS settings on your router based on CircleLoop's range of IP addresses.
Our apps connect using UDP to send and receive media - this can be on any port. You can set prioritisation rules in your QoS settings based on UDP packets on any ports, to and from the IP addresses listed below.
Media Server IP Addresses
13.41.250.10
18.133.20.155
3.11.93.125
35.176.115.55
3.11.240.167
13.41.235.160
3.11.218.169
13.43.76.229
13.41.94.114
13.43.65.45
18.170.188.31
18.168.243.64
Network Packet Prioritisation
In addition to IP & UDP Port rules, QoS rules can also be added based on DSCP markers. All our call media UDP packets get tagged with prioritisation data. We use a DSCP tag with code 46 for Expedited Forwarding to identify these packets.
Configure QoS settings on your router to ensure that Expedited Forwarding settings are honoured. It may be necessary to apply the same rules to any access points that you intend to connect to in addition to the primary router.
Configure your network speed
In order for the router to know when it's necessary to prioritise network traffic, it's often necessary to set maximum downstream/inbound and upstream/outbound throughput based on your fibre connection.
To do this you need to measure the actual speed of your connection. It's best to carry out these tests outside of normal office working hours when your network isn't being used by anybody else.
Go to www.fast.com in your web browser and perform 3 tests, each after the other and note down the downstream and upstream speeds from each test. Click on More Info to see the Upload test. Looking at your results, choose the lowest upstream and downstream result from the three tests.
With these settings you should be able to set the the WAN inbound or downstream bandwidth and WAN outbound or upstream bandwidth parameters according to your results.
If you've got any further questions around QoS or required network settings then please get in touch with our support team.