5 ms·

First, as others pointed out, you will need a decent internet connection, with minimized packet loss and jitter. Most metro area data connections and quality Wi

by athenot 10y ago

First, as others pointed out, you will need a decent internet connection, with minimized packet loss and jitter. Most metro area data connections and quality WiFi access points will be sufficient. However, the wifi router that comes from your provider and stuffed away on the other side of the house might not work very well. Secondly, good codecs make a world of difference. This is where I'll add the disclaimer that I'm in the collab side at Cisco. But I have the opposite experience using systems on my phone, my mac and with big telepresence units: the quality in all 3 settings far surpasses what's on PSTN, and if you're using good speakers or headsets, you can really appreciate the good quality. In your case, it sounds like you might benefit from a better network access point at home. Shameless plug #1: check out Cisco Spark. We still have some rough edges but I think the call quality is what you're looking for. I'm able to carry on a call and switch from wifi to LTE without dropping, or turn on VPN in the middle of a call and just get a few seconds pause before it recovers. https://www.ciscospark.com/ https://www.ciscospark.com/ Shameless plug #2: check out the new Sparkboard. It's got 12 microphones and does beamforming in order to filter our room noise away from whoever is speaking. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaboration-endpoints/spark-board/datasheet-c78-738316.html http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaborati...

kayimbo 10y ago
Does it automatically report your political and religious affiliation to chinese ministry of public security? Lol, zing.
- athenot 10y ago
  It's end-to-end encryption. For large sites, customer owns the encryption keys on their hardware so we can't intercept/decrypt even if we're ordered to.
doughj3 10y ago
I've tried using spark but unfortunately video calls don't seem to work at all when I'm on my corporate VPN (which is Cisco, btw). I really want to use it because it otherwise works on Linux (compared to webex...) but I need to be able to use it on the VPN.
snuxoll 10y ago
> Secondly, good codecs make a world of difference [...] quality in all 3 settings far surpasses what's on PSTN [...] To be fair, this is probably true of any decent VoIP solution on the market. The problem is always that moment you have to connect to the PSTN and you're forced into a choice of G.711 or G.729.

by athenot 10y ago

kayimbo 10y ago

Does it automatically report your political and religious affiliation to chinese ministry of public security? Lol, zing.

athenot 10y ago
It's end-to-end encryption. For large sites, customer owns the encryption keys on their hardware so we can't intercept/decrypt even if we're ordered to.

doughj3 10y ago

I've tried using spark but unfortunately video calls don't seem to work at all when I'm on my corporate VPN (which is Cisco, btw). I really want to use it because it otherwise works on Linux (compared to webex...) but I need to be able to use it on the VPN.

snuxoll 10y ago

> Secondly, good codecs make a world of difference [...] quality in all 3 settings far surpasses what's on PSTN [...] To be fair, this is probably true of any decent VoIP solution on the market. The problem is always that moment you have to connect to the PSTN and you're forced into a choice of G.711 or G.729.