You are a network administrator responsible for all network

You are a network administrator responsible for all network platforms and services. The cost savings for using voice-over-IP (VoIP) has prompted a request from the CIO to move all telephony services from switch-based to VoIP. What network management requirements need to be addressed and in place before the data network would be able to accommodate VoIP? Explain each in detail.

Solution

What will you measure?

Can you find a way to be proactively notified if call quality begins to deteriorate?

What you need to know about your network and VoIP traffic

To ensure that VoIP will work well on your network, you need to take several things into account before you implement VoIP or begin making network changes.

First, keep in mind that VoIP is a mission-critical network application. Perhaps, until this point, your most critical company application was email. Although email is very critical, it typically demands little of a network because it is forgiving of network delays. Email was designed to be queued and slowly travel the Internet. Thus, when your network has slowdowns, it doesn\'t mind.

Second, VoIP traffic needs a solid infrastructure. Those old hubs in the wiring closet just aren\'t going to cut it if your new VoIP phones are to provide high-quality calls. You will need a network infrastructure that is fast and reliable to speed along that VoIP traffic with minimal delays. Also, ensure that your network is secure -- free of viruses, worms and intrusions. You don\'t want this mission-critical application brought down by a security hole.

Third, you will need to implement Quality of Service (QoS) on your network.VoIP traffic cannot be competing with someone downloading a 100 MB PowerPoint presentation from the file server or someone listening to streaming audio from the Internet. The network must be designed so that VoIP has higher priority than just about every other application currently on the network. That is because VoIP is more delay-sensitive than 99% of other applications typically run on your network. In fact, audio is more sensitive to delay than video.