I have no idea is this is what was trying to be communicated about VOIP, but this is based on my own experience.

Most VOIP phones have a network port so that you can plug your computer into the back of the phone so that you only use 1 network port per cube, desk, etc. This method of connection become problematic because you are now mixing your Sage traffic with your VOIP traffic. Best practices (at least as it was explained to me by our VOIP vendor a decade ago) suggest that your VOIP phone network should be a separate network from the rest of your nodes.

These separate networks are managed by my Fortinet, which is both my router and my firewall. Phones are on a 172.x.x.x and everything else is 192.x.x.x. If I piggyback on one of my phones for a network port, that traffic will route to any device on the 192.x.x.x network perfectly fine but I can watch it travel across the 2 different networks serviced by my firewall router. I know from experience that I have made incorrect changes that have broken or hampered that bridge and affected a devices ability AND that Sage 100 Standard is in fact slower that way when running an I/O intensive process like a 30-40 page crystal report from the Sage menu.

Anecdotally, I have also seen a phone improperly plugged in getting a 192.x.x.x because that jack used was to the 192.x.x.x switch bring a Sage 100 Standard system to a crawl at one of my customers. We traced to an extension someone had decided to plug directly to a switch in the server room.  It was an intermittent issue because the IT person was taking their phone into the server room to call for support on something else and there was no phone in there.  It took weeks to figure out and we only did because the person had left the phone plugged in and wanted to go get their desk phone to work with us trouble shooting. Happenstance we put 2 and 2 together that everything was fine when he got back to his desk.

That makes sense: VOIP phone overloading the network with traffic, meaning less bandwidth available for Sage 100 activities.

It does actually make total sense now.

Sincerely appreciate all of the insight. Now I have a direction to go to resolve the issue once and for all.

Glad that it helped. Please report back an update what you found so the next person has more data!

Glad that it helped. Please report back an update what you found so the next person has more data!