How Network Performance Affects VoIP
May 18th, 2012 by admin
Companies today are increasingly replacing their traditional business phone system and implementing VoIP. VoIP reduces costs and increases business efficiency and productivity. Yet so many companies we have talked to who have implemented VoIP with other providers are having problems with their voice quality because a proper assessment of their network was never performed.
Many organizations don’t realize that deploying VoIP can have unexpected complications when it comes to its impact on network performance and other existing applications. Transitioning to a single shared infrastructure from a physically separate voice and data network requires new practices and procedures to ensure quality of voice. Analysts and experts alike agree a pre-deployment network assessment is the crucial first step.
75% of enterprises that do not perform a pre-implementation analysis of their IP network will not achieve a successful VoIP implementation. - Gartner
Gartner analyst Jeff Snyder has warned, 85 percent of networks are not ready for VoIP. And, starting the transition to convergence by assessing your network's ability to handle VoIP is the only way to gain a complete understanding of the scope of the project. All pre-deployment assessments should be done prior to the purchase of any hardware and the assessment must include a VoIP traffic simulation in order to gauge an accurate understanding of network readiness.
An Effective VoIP Assessment will:
- Measure the call load capability of the network
- Identify the faults and shortcomings of the network
- Provide a holistic view of the network’s ability to handle data and voice traffic
- Lower the project’s cost estimates
- Verify service level agreements (SLAs)
- Eliminate the network as a gating factor in the VoIP project
A complete network assessment should report on key performance indicators such as latency, loss, jitter, QoS, MOS, throughput and utilization to show how your network measures up.
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