G.711 codec

G.711 is a voice Codec that barely compresses the audio at all, running at about 64 kilobits per second per call. Because it leaves the sound nearly untouched, it delivers excellent, full-bodied call quality — it is often the benchmark that other codecs are compared against.

That quality comes at a cost in bandwidth. Each G.711 call fills its RTP stream with far more data than a compressing codec does, so a connection that could carry many G.729 codec calls will carry far fewer G.711 calls. The rough rule is that G.711 uses about three times the bandwidth of the heavily compressed option.

G.711 is the right pick when audio clarity matters more than packing in seats, and when you have bandwidth to spare. It is also widely supported, so two endpoints almost always share it as a common language, which makes it a safe default that rarely causes a VoIP call to fail because of a codec mismatch. On a local network with room to breathe, there is little reason to compress further.

For a newcomer the choice is straightforward. If you are running a small number of Concurrent calls over a solid connection, G.711 gives you the cleanest sound and the fewest headaches, and it tends to score the highest on the MOS (mean opinion score) quality scale. If you are trying to cram many calls onto a thin pipe, switch to a compressing codec and accept slightly thinner audio. Bandwidth is the deciding question either way.

There are two flavours of G.711 you may run into: one common in North America and one common in Europe, which encode the audio slightly differently. They are not interchangeable, so if a transatlantic call sounds garbled, a mismatch between the two is a likely cause. Beyond that quirk, G.711 is about as friendly as a codec gets, since it puts almost no load on the server's processor — there is very little compression work to do, which is the opposite of a heavily squeezing codec like G.729 codec. That low processing cost, combined with its near-universal support, is why so many systems keep G.711 in the mix as a reliable common ground. When you just want a call to connect and sound good without fuss, and you are not worried about bandwidth, G.711 is the easy default.