My dad has been talking about upgrading to it, but quite frankly he doesnt know how it all works. He doesn't understand that it uses our internet connection and that it could affect other users. I need to know how much bandwidth will it take if someone is on the phone, or will it affect ping rates while gaming?
If its relative to your internet connection speed, I have 3mbps download and a 1.5mbps upload.
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3Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload is quite sufficient for a good high quality VoIP connection.
However,the quality of VoIP calls often depends on more than just your connection speed. When a connection is serving multiple tasks simultaneously, QOS (Quality of Service) becomes an important issue.
If you are gaming and downloading Internet files at the same time as talking on VoIP calls, QOS is often necessary to to act as the data traffic cop to prioritize data flow. Even at your data link speeds, data can still bottleneck when too many tasks want to use the data pipe at the same time.
VoIP is almost always considered top priority over other data downloads. You don't want your voice conversations to be broken up because of other traffic on your network.
If you purchase a VoIP box from a VoIP service provider, then the box they give you is often preconfigured for QOS to prioritize VoIP over other data - which is the right thing to do.
For people like me, I purchased my own separate Router and VoIP ATA adapter, and then configure the boxes myself for my own preferred VoIP services. In this case, I had to configure my NAT/Router to implement QOS to give my VoIP calls top priority over all other local network data.
If you do find there to be conflict between VoIP and gaming, try to upgrade you Internet service to 5 Mbps download and 2-3 Mbps upload. But, when behind the same NAT/Router that may still not solve the data congestion bottleneck issues through that one router.
Another option to try, if increasing data speed doesn't solve data bottleneck issues, is to implement a "Network Switch" after the Modem. They are actually quite cheap. Then connect the VoIP Router/ATA to one of the Switch ports, and connect the rest of the home network to another of the Switch ports, behind another NAT/Router.
Your ISP will need to give you 2 dynamic IP addresses instead of 1 as most people use. (My ISP provides me with 2 dynamic IP addresses). Now, the VoIP NAT/
Router will get assigned to 1 IP address, and the other NAT/Router will get assinged the other IP address.
Now, each router can have their QOS set to prioritize the data most important for that leg of the local network.