Network Setup Recommendations

Dialpad is a cloud-based business phone system that lets you make and receive calls from anywhere with an internet connection. It also helps you manage contacts, access call logs and voicemails, transfer calls, and more.

Whether you're working remotely or traveling, Dialpad works seamlessly on any device with a reliable internet connection.

Let's dive into the details of network settings.

Bandwidth calculations

To ensure the best possible voice quality, we recommend using a high-speed DSL, broadband, or fiber-optic connection for all services. This applies to desk phones, Dialpad Desktop software, Dialpad Web App, and any CTI/mini dialer (ie: Salesforce CTI, Chrome CTI Extension, etc)

Calculate for each concurrent instance you plan to run:

Tip

For the best call quality, it's recommended to use a phone number that matches the location of your Dialpad Office and your primary customer base.

• Making calls within the same country or region generally results in better call quality and a more seamless customer experience.

• For example, a U.S.-based business with customers primarily located in the United States will generally experience better call quality when using U.S. phone numbers.

Routers, switches, and firewalls

Dialpad doesn’t require a specific brand or mode router, switch or firewall — however, to achieve the best possible quality of service, network hardware should have the following capabilities:

• QoS

• Bandwidth Limiting

• SNMP

We also require that these features to be turned off for Dialpad traffic (as they can interfere with the service).

Please contact your firewall vendor for help disabling these settings:

• SIP-ALG

• Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)

• Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)

Note

Stateful firewalls are not the same as a stateful packet inspections. A stateful firewall is a type, while a stateful packet inspection is a firewall and/or router setting (which we recommend disabling).

VPN

Dialpad isn’t designed to function over a VPN. If your company uses a VPN, please use a split tunnel and direct Dialpad traffic outside of the VPN.

VLAN

A virtual LAN (VLAN) can be used to put your hard-wired phone devices into separate networks, and to manage security and routing policies separately. If you plan to deploy IP phones, they can be placed in a "voice VLAN".

A voice VLAN isn’t a network requirement for Dialpad service but best practices for setting security, DHCP, routing, QoS/CoS a voice VLAN may be used.

Note

Setting a voice VLAN is required when Workstations are daisy-chained through IP Phones.

DHCP option 160

For each Voice VLAN there are phones configured on, you'll need to set up the DHCP server with the following URL: https://prov.dialpad.com

Once the URL has been configured, the phones will need to be attached to the correct Voice VLAN and support:

• CDP

• LLDP

• Auto VLAN Discover

• Static Assignment

Multiple internet circuits

If you are utilizing multiple internet circuits, the best practice is to set them up as Primary/Failover.

Please contact your network vendor for helping setting up a primary and secondary ISP.

DNS

Dialpad devices rely on DNS to make and receive calls, as well as to enable other phone features such as checking voicemail and accessing the contact directory.

Desk phones and ATAs on Dialpad are automatically configured to use Google’s DNS IPs 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. This means there’s no need to manually configure DNS or use DHCP Option 6 on devices such as desk phones and ATAs.

If you use a different DNS provider, it must be capable of resolving all the FQDNs listed in the section below.

Tip

We strongly recommend allowing the Dialpad system to automatically configure DNS on your devices for optimal performance.

FQDNs

Routing to a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), allows modern cloud networks flexibility for routing, security, system maintenance and remote device management.

Dialpad uses FQDNs for managing:

• Registrations

• SIP requests to set up a call

• Device Firmware

• Device Configurations

• Remote Devices

We recommend allowing traffic to and from each of these FQDNs:

Ports & protocols

Port and protocols used by Dialpad phones and applications residing in a private network are listed below. Outbound port configurations are needed on the firewall to allow traffic to the destination ports listed in the right-hand side column of the tables. Stateful firewalls (not to be confused with stateful packet inspection!) are recommended for Dialpad deployments. For a stateful firewall, inbound port configurations are not needed as they are automatically opened as a reply to the outbound traffic.

Desktop Native, Mobile, & Browser Applications

Desk Phones - Poly, Obi-Edition & UCS, Yealink, Mitel and Grandstream

Jitter, Packet Loss & Latency

In order to maintain high quality audio on voice and video calls, Dialpad recommends the following jitter, packet loss, and latency (round trip) values.

Optimal values

Acceptable values

For more information on performing network tests and analyzing results, read this Help Center article.

Virtual environment

Unsupported configurations

Dialpad doesn’t support using our services through these tools:

• Remote Desktop Clients (RDPs)

For running the network tests, follow the instructions in this Help Center article.