Posted on by Carl

A reminder of why I like VOIP.MS as our telephone service provider

Our firm has been using VOIP.MS as our telephone service provider since 2017, with no regrets.  Across those seven years we have saved at least twenty thousand dollars compared with what our telephone services would have cost from any other service provider.  This blog article provides a reminder of one of the reasons that I like VOIP.MS, namely geographic server diversity. 

Most VOIP service providers have one or maybe two servers – typically a first server on the East Coast of the US, and a second server somewhere else in the US.  And that’s it.

In contrast, VOIP.MS operates servers in eleven cities in the US, and in three cities in Canada, and in three cities in Europe, and a server in Australia.  You can see the list below.

A first good thing about the geographic server diversity with VOIP.MS is that as a customer, you can try to minimize latency.  By this we mean the time delay that gets introduced into the talk path due to the distance between the customer’s telephone and the server to which the telephone is “registered”.  If you use a VOIP provider that is not VOIP.MS, the length of the talk path might be the distance to New Jersey (the location of the single server that the provider operates).  If, however, you are using VOIP.MS, you might find that you are nearby to another one of their servers.  You might be in California and you might find that San Jose or Los Angeles is closer than New Jersey.  This would reduce the time delay as data packets rush back and forth between your phone and the server that you selected.

Fun fact — my firm provides a free-of-charge VOIP test server.  You can dial 1-720-230-1331 and select option 4 to do a latency test.  You speak into your phone, and what you say is repeated back to you.

Right now I am in the mountains of Colorado.  Common sense tells me that the latency to a server in Denver will be smaller than the latency to a server in, say, New Jersey.

A second good thing about the geographic server diversity with VOIP.MS is that by picking a nearby server rather than a far-away server, you will have reduced your vulnerability to congestion in intervening routers.  Any intervening router might be congested and it is something over which you have no control.  Again, right now I am in the mountains of Colorado.  Common sense tells me that the number of router “hops” to reach a server in Denver will be smaller than the number of router “hops” to reach a server in, say, New Jersey.   This reduces the number of routers whose congestion could affect the quality of my VOIP telephone calls.

Fax servers.  The alert reader will have spotted the two fax servers on this list.  Yes, VOIP.MS operates two servers that are optimized for the T.38 fax codec.  This permits you to operate a fax machine on a SIP trunk and it might actually work.  In contrast, if you try to operate a fax machine on a SIP trunk that uses a voice codec, the fax transmission is very likely to fail.

    • VOIP.MS servers in the US
      1. Atlanta 1, GA (atlanta1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.17
      2. Atlanta 2, GA (atlanta2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.18
      3. Chicago 1, IL (chicago1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.8
      4. Chicago 2, IL (chicago2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.9
      5. Chicago 3, IL (chicago3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.10
      6. Chicago 4, IL (chicago4.voip.ms) 208.100.60.6
      7. Dallas 1, TX (dallas1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.29
      8. Dallas 2, TX (dallas2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.30
      9. Denver 1, CO (denver1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.32
      10. Denver 2, CO (denver2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.33
      11. Fax Server 1 (fax1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.81
      12. Fax Server 2 (fax2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.82
      13. Houston 1, TX (houston1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.15
      14. Houston 2, TX (houston2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.16
      15. Los Angeles 1, CA (losangeles1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.35
      16. Los Angeles 2, CA (losangeles2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.36
      17. Los Angeles 3, CA (losangeles3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.37
      18. Los Angeles 4, CA (losangeles4.voip.ms) 208.100.60.38
      19. New York 1, NY (newyork1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.66
      20. New York 2, NY (newyork2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.67
      21. New York 3, NY (newyork3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.68
      22. New York 4, NY (newyork4.voip.ms) 208.100.60.69
      23. New York 5, NY (newyork5.voip.ms) 208.100.60.11
      24. New York 6, NY (newyork6.voip.ms) 208.100.60.12
      25. New York 7, NY (newyork7.voip.ms) 208.100.60.13
      26. New York 8, NY (newyork8.voip.ms) 208.100.60.14
      27. San Jose 1, CA (sanjose1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.40
      28. San Jose 2, CA (sanjose2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.41
      29. Seattle 1, WA (seattle1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.42
      30. Seattle 2, WA (seattle2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.43
      31. Seattle 3, WA (seattle3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.44
      32. Tampa 1, FL (tampa1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.46
      33. Tampa 2, FL (tampa2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.47
      34. Tampa 3, FL (tampa3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.48
      35. Tampa 4, FL (tampa4.voip.ms) 208.100.60.49
      36. Washington 1, DC (washington1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.63
      37. Washington 2, DC (washington2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.64
    • VOIP.MS servers in Canada
      1. Montreal 1, QC (montreal1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.19
      2. Montreal 2, QC (montreal2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.20
      3. Montreal 3, QC (montreal3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.21
      4. Montreal 4, QC (montreal4.voip.ms) 208.100.60.22
      5. Montreal 5, QC (montreal5.voip.ms) 208.100.60.23
      6. Montreal 6, QC (montreal6.voip.ms) 208.100.60.24
      7. Montreal 7, QC (montreal7.voip.ms) 208.100.60.25
      8. Montreal 8, QC (montreal8.voip.ms) 208.100.60.26
      9. Montreal 9, QC (montreal9.voip.ms) 208.100.60.27
      10. Montreal 10, QC (montreal10.voip.ms) 208.100.60.28
      11. Toronto 1, ON (toronto1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.50
      12. Toronto 2, ON (toronto2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.51
      13. Toronto 3, ON (toronto3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.52
      14. Toronto 4, ON (toronto4.voip.ms) 208.100.60.53
      15. Toronto 5, ON (toronto5.voip.ms) 208.100.60.54
      16. Toronto 6, ON (toronto6.voip.ms) 208.100.60.55
      17. Toronto 7, ON (toronto7.voip.ms) 208.100.60.56
      18. Toronto 8, ON (toronto8.voip.ms) 208.100.60.57
      19. Toronto 9, ON (toronto9.voip.ms) 208.100.60.58
      20. Toronto 10, ON (toronto10.voip.ms) 208.100.60.59
      21. Vancouver 1, BC (vancouver1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.60
      22. Vancouver 2, BC (vancouver2.voip.ms) 208.100.60.61
      23. Vancouver 3, BC (vancouver3.voip.ms) 208.100.60.62
    • VOIP.MS servers outside of the US and Canada
      1. Amsterdam 1, NL (amsterdam1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.65
      2. London 1, UK (london1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.34
      3. Paris 1, FR (paris1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.39
      4. Sydney 1, AU (sydney1.voip.ms) 208.100.60.45

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