The quality of a VoIP call depends on your internet connection. Too many lost packets indicate that your conversation won’t be clear. You can determine the quality of your internet connection and its ability to quickly carry packets to a destination using a method called PING (Packet Internet Groper).

What to Know

  • Find the IP address of your VoIP provider’s gateway. Then, open Command Prompt and enter Ping [IP address].
  • Use the shortcut CTRL+C to summarize the results, including the number of packets sent and received and the packet loss.
  • The lower the time value on each of the four lines, the better your connection. Packet loss should be no more than 5 percent.

Use PING to Test for VoIP Connection Quality

Follow these steps to test your internet connection:

  • Try to find out the IP address of the gateway of your VoIP provider. One option is to simply call the company and ask. If the company won’t release it, then try with any IP address or use this example IP address from Google: 64.233.161.83.
  • Open your computer’s command prompt.
  • For Windows 7 and 10 users, select the Start button and in the search box that appears, type: CMD
  • Then press Enter.
  • For Windows XP, click the Start button, click Run, and in the text box type:
  • Then press Enter.
  • A window with a black background should open with white text inside and a blinking cursor, taking you back to the early days of computers.
  • Type the PING command followed by an IP address — for example: Ping 64.233.161.83

Then press Enter. If you have your gateway’s address, use it instead of this example IP address. After a few seconds or longer, four or more lines should appear, each saying something like:

Try to find out the IP address of the gateway of your VoIP provider. One option is to simply call the company and ask. If the company won’t release it, then try with any IP address or use this example IP address from Google: 64.233.161.83.

Open your computer’s command prompt.

For Windows 7 and 10 users, select the Start button and in the search box that appears, type: CMD

Then press Enter.

For Windows XP, click the Start button, click Run, and in the text box type: 

A window with a black background should open with white text inside and a blinking cursor, taking you back to the early days of computers.

Type the PING command followed by an IP address — for example: Ping 64.233.161.83

  • Reply from 64.233.161.83: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=54

Understanding the Results

To keep things simple, you should be interested only in the time value on each of the four lines. The lower it is, the happier you should be. If it goes higher than 100 ms (that’s milliseconds), you should worry about your connection. You probably won’t have a clean VoIP voice conversation.

  • When the process is complete, press Ctrl + C to summarize the results and show the number of packets sent, received and the percentage of packet loss. You should have reasonable quality with a loss of no more than 5 percent.
  • If instead of showing values, the PING test shows Request timed out, it means that no packet reached the destination and returned. You either have no connection or you have a wrong IP address or one that is unreachable.

Other Reasons for PING Tests

You can use PING tests for checking any connection. Each time you need to check your internet, do a PING test. You can also test your success when trying to connect to a router or hub on a network. Just PING the device’s IP address, which is often generically 192.168.1.1. You can test the TCP networking modules of your own machine by pinging your own machine, by always using 127.0.0.1, or by replacing that address by the word localhost.

If PING doesn’t give you the information you need, use online speed tests to test your internet connection and VoIP utilization. 

VoIP Connection Speed Requirements

VoIP calls tend to consume a considerable amount of bandwidth. That means you need a relatively fast and stable internet connection to maintain a call. We recommend a connection of at least 512 kbps (kilobits per second), or 0.512 Mbps. A basic broadband package should deliver this kind of speed, but if the network is crowded with other users or high-bandwidth activity, your available speed may suffer.

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