Tackling VoIP & UC Trouble
Solve Difficulties With These Technologies To Keep Your Communications Infrastructure Humming Along

by Christian Perry, Processor Magazine

Despite the popularity of email, messaging, and other data-based technologies, voice remains the communication lifeblood for many small and midsized enterprises. As such, implementation and use of VoIP and UC (unified communications) must remain trouble-free to ensure that employees, clients, customers, and others can stay in touch. These technologies are far from flawless, however, so here’s a look at common problems and how to solve them.

Converged Network Woes

According to Scott Kinka, senior vice president of network services for Evolve IP (www.evolveip.net), convergence brings an entirely new responsibility of adding and moving voice to an existing network. However, voice streams are more sensitive to network congestion than data—whereas a millisecond delay in a loading Web page may not be noticeable, the same delay in a delivered voice packet can result in a moment of silence or a stutter.

Kinka explains that the most common factors affecting a converged deployment are latency (the time it takes the voice stream to travel from endpoint to endpoint), packet loss (high amounts of data congestion can cause routers and switches to overflow, and they will occasionally discard packets to keep traffic moving), and jitter (the difference in time between the expected transmission rate of data and the time it actually arrives).

“To avoid the problems of jitter, packet loss, and delay, a thorough network assessment should be performed to ensure there is sufficient bandwidth [on] LAN and WAN and control for the introduction of IP voice,” Kinka says. “Pay particular attention to links where traffic transitions from LAN to WAN. Conduct a complete network inventory and understand the current bandwidth consumption of existing applications, as well as future calling traffic patterns. Always give precedence to voice packets on the network for timely delivery.”

Read the full article online here: Tackling VoIP & UC Trouble by Christian Perry