General Questions
- What is VoIP Spear?
- VoIP Spear is an online service monitors the quality of VoIP services.
- How does VoIP Spear work?
- VoIP Spear sends network traffic to your VoIP endpoints at regular intervals. We monitor the effect the Internet has had on the traffic and, using this information, we can estimate the quality of a VoIP call under these network conditions.
- How can I tell how good or bad my VoIP quality is?
- We estimate the quality of your VoIP quality using MOS (Mean Opinion Score), the industry's standard way of rating VoIP QoS. MOS is a number from 1 (bad) to 5 (good).
- Will I have to install any software on my computer or server?
- No. VoIP Spear is completely automatic, meaning that you won't have to install anything on any computer or server.
Pricing
- How much does it cost?
- Take a look at our price plans for more information about this. Also note that our Personal plan is free of charge and lets you monitor one VoIP endpoint.
- Will you always offer a free service?
- We plan to offer a free VoIP Spear service permanently. This will likely be limited in some way (e.g., only one VoIP test).
- If I cancel my VoIP Spear account, will I get my money back?
- Yes. We believe in treating our customers fairly. If you don't use our service, we will refund you for the unused portion.
VoIP Quality Measurement
- What is MOS (Mean Opinion Score)?
- Mean Opinion Score is a number between 1 (poor quality) and 5 (excellent quality) that provides an indication of the quality of a phone call. MOS is the most common method for determining the quality of a voice call.
- How accurate is VoIP Spear?
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Technically speaking, MOS is an 'opinion' score. The true way to calculate MOS is to have a panel of human beings listen to a phone call and rate it between 1 and 5. The MOS is the average of these scores. Obviously, this is an expensive and time-consuming way to measure speech quality.
VoIP Spear uses a method called the E-Model to estimate MOS based on network characteristics. The E-Model is a computational model published by the ITU-T for estimating MOS. It is a reliable method for estimating MOS based on network characteristics.