I help coach my 13-year-old daughter’s soccer team. During practices, I’ll occasionally jump into scrimmages to help out – usually making the tactical mistake of assuming that because the players are still technically “kids,” things will remain reasonably safe for the adults involved. A couple of months ago, I volunteered to play goalkeeper during one… Continue Reading
IP Networks
Would your Network Survive a Penalty Shootout?
Sunday, October 19, 3.30pm: I am standing on the sideline of a soccer field, heart pounding as our U14 girls team lines up for the penalty shootout to decide the final of the San Ramon Boo Cup. The girls are dressed as Batgirl, and our opponents (our local rivals, who we have never beaten) are… Continue Reading
Did you get lucky with the AWS outage
I posted these thoughts to LinkedIn on Monday. I had intended to send them out by email on Monday also, but ironically our email list provider (Drip) was out of service due to the AWS outage… I want to take a moment to give kudos to all the voice providers (and other cloud applications) that… Continue Reading
CSI: VoIP – Uncovering the Truth One Packet at a Time
I enjoy a good crime drama. Some shows lean into car chases and explosions, but my favorites are the ones where a scientist takes center stage — like Abby Sciuto in NCIS or Temperance Brennan in Bones. The heroes in these stories aren’t always chasing suspects down dark alleys; they’re squinting at tiny fibers, replaying… Continue Reading
Choppy Calls, Happy Customers: Fixing Voice Quality at the Network Layer
Have you ever experienced this? A frustrated customer calls their ISP complaining that every phone conversation sounds like a badly dubbed sci-fi film. Voices break up, syllables stretch unnaturally, and sometimes entire sentences vanish into the void. It’s not just annoying — it’s unusable. Eventually, the culprit is found: a misconfigured network switch that’s throttling… Continue Reading
When the MSP shrugs: Why telecoms expertise matters for firewall configuration
More and more of our clients are turning to us for help with IP networking — so we’re currently publishing a series of articles where we focus on key lessons and strategies from the front lines of IP and VoIP convergence. Recently, one of our clients found themselves stuck. They were trying to set up… Continue Reading