Overview

Echo is a troubling problem for telecom professionals. Most of us have suffered through a telephone call where we had to try to talk with a lot of echo on the wire. It is very distracting. Most people find it hard to concentrate when they hear their own words repeated, and try to talk over them.

Voice over IP (VoIP) does not create echo. However, due to the temporal aspect of echo, VoIP systems can and do increase the amount of echo heard during a telephone conversation. Echo cancellation is one of the more complex parameters that need tuning to preserve VoIP call quality. And IP networking specialists are increasingly finding that they must understand and monitor echo cancellation to manage their VoIP system.

This white paper gives an overview of echo issues, provides a brief introduction to echo cancellation, and describes the echo metrics provided by the CA Unified Communications Monitor (UC Monitor) management solution.