Eliminate risks before VoIP affects network performance

Are you ready for the risk of using VoIP? This article will introduce some information you need to know before applying VoIP. Every VoIP vendor on the market recommends infrastructure audits. For you, it is important to know what they want to view, and it is also important to look for issues they may not solve in the audit.

When checking your network, the robustness is actually placed in the second place. First, you must determine what you have and then determine the network performance. The difference between data communication and voice communication is real-time speech transmission. We have all used phone numbers with ECHO problems, or we all feel it is necessary to say "over" at the end of each sentence so that the other party can start to speak. It is interesting when we are a child using a walkie talkie. However, this is unacceptable for enterprises. To understand the problem affecting network performance, Let's define some key exceptions that may affect the understanding of speech transmission.

LatencyIt is a delay caused by actual transmission. Latency can be compared to the time taken between a ball being thrown and when the other party receives the ball. In speech-level transmission, long latency is unacceptable. In a speech network, latency less than 150 milliseconds is acceptable. If two people using a high-latency VoIP system can notice this latency when both parties can directly see the other party. The result is like watching an old-fashioned Godzilla movie. You can hear the speaker's voice only when your lips are moving.

Packet LossIt is another unacceptable factor in voice communication. In normal voice transmission, the decoder converts voice acoustic waves into digital data packets for transmission. These packets are then organized for transmission over the network. VoIP carries a very small voice conversation sample, generally 20 ms. Some loss may not seriously reduce the definition of the call. However, the loss of more than 1% will have an impact. Packet loss may occur in the congested network, overload or busy network.

JitterIt is another obstacle to speech quality. Packet Delay may cause intermittent or irregular reception of data packets. When VoIP is used on a busy and congested network, it is difficult to compensate for Jitter at the receiving site and the sending site. Caching voice communication at the receiving end helps compensate for jitter. In fact, the conversation is stored until it is sufficient to be sent to the receiver. The TCP/IP protocol transmits data packets based on several routing algorithms. To make VoIP work normally, you must not only pay attention to the path of the data packet, but also pay attention to the network capacity and health status. Excessive jitter will prevent the conversation from being cracked. The new layer-3 switch can alleviate the jitter problem because it can understand the priority.

Incorrect sequenceAn error occurs when a packet does not arrive at the receiving station in sequence. TCP/IP data packets contain key data at their locations. A sending station (whether a PC or any device compatible with the TCP/IP protocol) divides data packets into datagram for sending. These data packets are assigned different sequential numbers. If data packets are transmitted through different paths due to network congestion, hardware failure, and re-transmission due to connection issues, the data packets are not received in order. A higher order error may cause a decline in the call quality.

EchoThe Grand Canyon is wonderful. When you stand on the edge or below the Grand Canyon, it is best to hear the echo of the Grand Canyon. However, in a speech system, ECHO is unacceptable. Return the lost data packet or signal to the sender. This will cause more data packet loss in your cable line equipment. If the echo occurs outside your office building, it is the operator's problem. If it occurs inside the office building, it is your cable line equipment problem. Echo eliminator helps solve this problem. However, compared with fixing your cable, the echo eliminator is expensive.

All the problems on your network may cause the above errors. One of the most easily overlooked problems is your cable line equipment. When evaluating your cable line equipment, you should check the following items. First, check whether there are sufficient cable connection ports in each network area. The standard requires that each network area have two completely terminated outlets (Cat 6 cables are recommended at a minimum, but 5e cables are used for most users ). You can purchase a phone number with a built-in switch. However, in the long run, this additional cable is more expensive. The cable is passive and does not require active maintenance. The service life is longer than that of the telephone.

Only these two connections are not enough. It is important to ensure that all the test parameters of the cable connection pass. If your cable connection does not pass all the parameters (it is unacceptable if it fails), you cannot achieve the desired effect. It is predicted that more than 50% of the 5e cables installed and used so far have not passed the 5e test. This mainly caused some problems during installation of barely compliant cables. All communication transmission will be connected through these cables. Therefore, cable connection is the most important issue to be considered. Errors in infrastructure can make very expensive electronic devices useless.

Next, check whether your vswitch has two or three layers. Based on the function, both vswitches support VoIP. VLAN may be helpful. However, in both cases, it is very important to understand some types of priority indicators and service quality. Do not imagine that you must replace all your current infrastructure to use VoIP. You may not need to change any device. Although you do not have manageable electronic devices, I strongly recommend that you add such software and firewall features to increase the VoIP feature. Remember, sales is sales. Not all sales staff are responsible for your network. If the deployment of VoIP is beyond your capacity, you should seek resources that can help you make decisions. You should not waste money. Remember that Every salesperson receives training based on their own products. You cannot ask the dentist why your feet hurt. Both teeth and feet are part of your body, but you must remember to seek help from professionals.

Finally, check your electronic device. If you use an unmanageable electronic device to run the network, it is very difficult. It is difficult for end users to report data re-transmission issues because they cannot see the data. However, if you add voice functions, voice data must be seen. At the minimum, you must ensure that each port has a duplex function. Don't imagine that everything is fine. Take some time to check the speed and duplex features. If your network is half-duplex, check your settings. If these settings are set to full or automatic, your network is half duplex. You 'd better check your cable connections. This problem may occur if the connection is poor or the channel is too long.

Now you understand the problems of voice communication and the tasks of your electronic devices and infrastructure. Please read the next section of this lecture. The next section describes what you can learn from manageable electronic devices and how to determine the health status of the entire network to avoid these problems.

1. Check the network and device running status before applying VoIP.
2. New vulnerabilities of VoIP that threaten Data Security