Using VoIP over a wide area network: Basic Network Planning

As long as your network architecture management and preparation are in place, VoIP will be excellent on the wide area network.

Enterprises should know that the performance of the VoIP system is no different from that of the traditional TDMPBX. According to MarkArman, vice president of the ShoreTel marketing department, using VoIP on the wide area network requires the following two items:

Enterprise Network must be set to QoS (Service Quality)

An appropriate system administrator should be involved in each enterprise installation to Ensure network monitoring and maintenance.

ZeusKerravala, chief analyst at ZKResearch, believes that once enterprises put VoIP into the production environment on the WAN, the network infrastructure will change in the future. The network administrator must change the configuration to Ensure network performance.

Kerravala said: "If you periodically monitor, you will know who made the adjustments, when and why. And, if necessary, you can roll back and undo the change ."

VoIP running on Wide Area Networks: evaluating infrastructure

Arman said: "When preparing to run VoIP on the Wide Area Network, enterprises should consider the most basic things. This is an electrical system. If the power supply is a problem for the Enterprise, you must overcome this difficulty before preparing to purchase an IP phone number ."

Arman said: "If the public equipment and power supply specifications meet the technical requirements, the telephone manufacturer evaluates the enterprise network to determine whether VoIP is suitable for running on the wide area network. In addition, vendors may suggest upgrading some software and network devices ."

Kerravala believes that after the infrastructure is ready, engineers can use multi-frequency VoIP and the decoder recommended by the manufacturer to obtain the best speech quality.

When using multi-frequency VoIP (HD voice), Kerravala said: "engineers should establish rules for the allocated bandwidth. This ensures that there is available HD voice for important voice communication. Although multiple frequencies consume a lot of bandwidth, the voice quality is very good ."

Running VoIP on a wide area network: Best Practices

For the best service quality, that is, to get rid of latency and jitter, Kerravala recommends that network engineers follow the following practices:

Meet the VoIP power requirements. As power surges, intermittent power outages in an outdated, poorly managed electrical system cannot achieve high quality VoIP.

Work with consultants. Works with consultants, system integrators, or value-added distributors who have experience deploying VoIP on the wide area network.

Do a good job in the Early Stage: to ensure reliability, understand your network, and ensure that facilities, computers, telephones, and networks are ready before access. Centralized call control allows you to transmit voice over a wide area network, delivering voice over a wide area network just like other applications.

Use redundant WAN links to ensure high availability and reliability. Most vendors have failover to cope with system failures, so there will be no downtime after installation.

Use MPLS as a separate service category to eliminate competition with other applications.

Dedicated bandwidth for VoIP: For the best service quality, we can find a way to reserve dedicated bandwidth for voice.

Measure the test taker's understanding about the maximum call traffic to ensure sufficient bandwidth is available to support business needs.