Touching on some of the issues I addressed in previous BLOG postings about VoIP and Quality of Service (QoS), we have addressed LAN and WAN VoIP related issues. IN particular, on the LAN side, it is certainly possible for an internal corporate network to itself get flooded with data, and in turn, experience packet loss, delay, jitter, echo …
On an internal network you can install a QoS (quality of service) switch which will prioritize the voice packets over the data packets on the internal network. Installing a QoS enabled router between two offices with data packets running over the Internet will NOT necessarily fix voice-related issues. That is because the voice packets are still running over the Internet, and remember, there is NO guarantee when sending voice over the Internet.
How do we overcome these issues? QoS is probably one of the most critical pieces. If we can GUARANTEE QoS, then we can GUARANTEE voice (as much as anything can ever be guaranteed). Therefore, if we wish to connect two offices together in a VoIP mode, or have someone working from home using VoIP, and you want perfect voice, then you will need to purchase POINT-to-POINT bandwidth.
This has been a frequent issue when dealing with customers. Perfect costs money in a VoIP world. I have many customers connecting home workers in the branch offices in Toronto, Montreal, new York, Chicago…without any problems whatsoever. I have other customers connecting two offices together, one two blocks away from the other, with terrible voice quality. If you use the Internet as your point of medium, then, and I will repeat what I said earlier, your voice will be subject to the vagrancies of the Internet.
My VoIP engineering rule: Garbage In = Garbage Out
And as I have said before, it doesn’t matter whether you are using an Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, Cisco phone system, they are all subject to the same issues.
Jeff Wiener
Digitcom.ca, 250 Rimrock Rd., Toronto, Canada
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Do you have a guidebook in French?
No – there is no guidebook in French.