To get the best possible VOIPo service, I have configured QoS on my router for VOIPo. I have been doing this for quite a while now and it has worked flawlessly until recently. My QoS configuration is simple—and, for the most part, I can only leverage layer 3/4 information for packet classification. Based on this, I have crudely used sip.voipwelcome.com (67.228.182.2) for my QoS—any traffic to/from this IP gets high priority, but this no longer seems to cover the traffic between VOIPo and me as of late.

In reviewing my traffic graphs/logs, initial communication is still done with sip.voipwelcome.com, but now it is highly likely that traffic might be handed off to another IP. Over the last 30 days, concerning VOIPo, I have also communicated with 174.36.46.52, 67.228.190.147 and 174.36.46.53 (all these IPs belong to SoftLayer so I assume VOIPo has some business relationship with them).

I realize that QoS configuration differs for various environments—for example, in my case, I use a softphone and don’t want to configure QoS so it simply prioritizes any traffic going to/from the phone (the phone does more than just make calls). As such, I would appreciate it if someone from VOIPo can chime in on this, provide some insight into VOIPo traffic flows and make some recommendations.

Thanks.