VoIP Questions.

/usr

The company I work for is getting ready to switch offices. We're privately owned and relatively small, so it's not a huge move, but we're building it from the ground up. Installing cable trays, rebuilding the data center, pulling cable, terminating, blah blah.

Since we're doing all of this, we're going to need to put in a phone system. We considered Microsoft Response Point. It looked interesting and easy to deploy, but it's limited to 50 users, can't do VoIP calls over a WAN, and has other limitations.

So, now I've got to look into a VoIP system. The thing is, this is really one area where I lack any real knowledge. It interests me immensely, but I've just never had the chance to get my into much telecom type work.

I'm reading the Wikipedia entry now and plan on fully exploring whatever links I can find there, but one thing I'm curious about right now is this...

When running VoIP on a network that also handles all data communication, do you have to monitor network traffic VERY closely in order to achieve perfect call quality, or is it only required to do basic maintenance?

Also, what tools do those of you use who have deployed and worked with VoIP?

liven

My experience with Corporate level voip and networking required the network to be pretty stable and un cluttered....

Now we have the biggest issues with building that were connected via WIFI. If the wifi was not working in very optimal states the cal quality was horrible....

However we did have several users spread through out the world communicating to the home office. They seemed to have no issues... Well once all the firewalls and NAT was setup correctly. In the beggining for me, NAT and VOIP was kind of a pain in the @ss. But as time went on it got much easier.

As far as Qos, I didn't get into it much, but in the voip world it can be pretty big. I wouldn't be able to tell you any good monitoring software for this or other aspects of the phones performance besides SNMP.

We were not using Cisco or Microsoft, so all solutions were custom developed. WHich probably limited what we were really able to do. I mean we did use big name products, but no a single vendor solution.

I did have access to professional level NMS software that helped watch the voip systems stats, and I could walk the phones with SNMP. I could also see the call stats, and some other general aspects of the phone call quality. But at the time it was more of a digging type process to get details on how things were really working.

I am sure by now there are much better tools for this. Hopefully someone will chime in.

I know luckycharms has used ASterisk like me and he has also used Cisco Voip. So maybe he will have more advice.

Luckycharms

/usr you pretty much just opened a can of worms that can get really messy really fast. To answer you question about deployment, that all comes down to what kind of money/ time/ and network philosophy you have. If you will indulge me with some answers to the following questions I might be able to send you in the right direction for some long nights of reading.


1. budget constraints - Open Source \ Multi-vendor \ Single-vendor < least to most expensive>
2. Network Design - (WAN - PSTN - LAN hardware) (Centralized or Distributed Structure)
3. R&D time - P.S. you never want to jump into a product because of the NAME!!! ( Microsoft or Cisco) Do your own research and understand the technology before you get into it... but also don't forget all vendors are not equal. ( Time line for deployment)

Those are some simple questions that can start you off. I am finding this place to be a really good community of knowledgeable people. So don't hesitate to ask what ever questions you might have.

mikej412

liven wrote:

My experience with Corporate level voip and networking required the network to be pretty stable and un cluttered....

Yep -- if you have a stable and converged network, then you can apply QoS to support the Voice Traffic (along with any required upgrades) -- then let the VoIP guys/gals do their voice magic.

You can check the Cisco CCVP FAQ for the links to the Cisco Solution Reference Network Designs. Those are good for some high level ideas about voice and what you could be getting into.

Also mentioned in the FAQ (under Other Resources) and somewhere in the CCVP Forum is the Cisco Unified Communications IP Telephony Technical Information Site. While a lot of it will be Cisco Specific and it follows the Cisco Design Methodology, the outlines and information for the steps involved -- Prepare and Plan, Design, Implement, Operate, and Optimize -- are still useful, even if you go with another vendors solution or piece something together around Asterisk.

Luckycharms

SRND's are an amazing place to start... good catch mikej412...