Conducting
a Voice Over IP Readiness Assessment
of Your Corporate Network
2005
is predicted to be the year of voice over
IP (VoIP) solutions for a growing number
of corporate enterprises - both large
and small.
If
you have been considering the benefits
of implementing VoIP, you are certainly
not alone. In its just-published "2005
Telecommunications Report," Harris
Interactive found that 87% of business
decision-makers are familiar with VoIP
and, of that number, 12% currently use
it in their organizations.
So
what's the big attraction?
Cost
mainly. But lowering company telecom expenses
is just one aspect of the lure of implementing
VoIP solutions. Other advantages include
the potential for value-added services
and the capability of more advanced features
made possible through the integration
of voice and data (e.g. videoconferencing,
advanced voicemail features,etc.)
Sounds
good, but here's the rub...it's also been
estimated that up to 85% of corporate
networks are simply not ready to handle
VoIP.
Combining
voice with data is a tricky proposition.
After decades of getting used to near-perfect
sound quality delivered over traditional
voice networks, even the slightest delays
in voip can be very annoying.
Before
diving in to a full-blown VoIP solution,
it is advisable that you conduct a voice
over IP readiness assessment of your existing
network. This assessment will provide
you with two very important pieces of
information:
- The
capability of your existing data network
to deliver high-quality voip calls, and;
- the
ability to evaluate the quality of these
calls during a wide variety of traffic
scenarios.
Keep
in mind that most data networks were not
designed for VoIP, so chances are that some
upgrading of your existing network will
be necessary. One critical requirement for
VoIP to work is QoS. (Short for Quality
of Service, a networking term that specifies
a guaranteed throughput level). For QoS
to work, the routers and switches that manage
the data traffic flow in your network must
be able to prioritize VoIP data packets
via QoS.
4
Steps to a Successful VoIP Readiness Assessment
- Conduct
a complete inventory of your existing
network. Identify routers, switches and
links in your network and store their
configuration data in a database. This
step is crucial before you can move to
step 2.
- Determine
the current CPU, memory and bandwidth
of your network devices, routers and switches.
This information will give you a "baseline"
of your existing network infrastructure
and current capacity.
- Simulate
and compare VoIP usage scenarios to estimate
the call capacity of the network.
- Determine
how well VoIP will perform on your network
by measuring simulated VoIP traffic and
calculating call quality based on a Mean
Opinion Score (MOS).
We
have recently added a VoIP
bandwidth calculator tool to help you
determine various codec,
MOS, and bandwidth
scenarios.
While
VoIP can ride over the highways that your
data currently does, it is a new application
with new rules. A VoIP readiness assessment
will give you the information you need to
incorporate a VoIP solution without unnecessary
hassles and expenses due to lack of proper
planning and research.
or simply...
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