Precautionary VoIP Phone System Implementation and Maintenance Might Be Necessary

The moment a company commits to migrate to VoIP technology, there is a need to analyze carefully the existing business processes and requirements, the projected short-term and long-term company needs, and the current bandwidth and speed of the broadband service the company have. These are necessary not only to be able to comprehensively design a VoIP system tailor-made for the business but more importantly, to prevent possible failure of the VoIP system once in place.

VoIP Lifecycle Management

A methodology called VoIP Lifecycle Management (VLM) thus emerged as a way to plan and manage the impact of VoIP deployment on existing LANs, and to manage and continuously maintain the network after the company has transitioned to VoIP. The adding of new IP phones, increasing data flow and the aging of equipment might eventually result in breakdowns, and VLM works to anticipate these potential problems so that corrective remedies are implemented before the system fails. The VLM has three distinct stages: analysis, installation/testing and ongoing monitoring.

Analysis for Readiness

VoIP experts estimate that as much as 85 percent of existing company LANs are not ready for data and voice integration. Most of existing LANs grew organically, typically with the addition of devices and cables here and there as the need arises, rather than from a prepared network design.

Among the most important aspects that must be determined include the maximum concurrent calls (as the service provider needs to know beforehand how much bandwidth and facilities to reserve) and the calls per second rate (to prevent inundating the servers with hundreds of calls that may cause system crashes.

Installation and verification

Only after the existing LAN is verified to be capable of handling VoIP should one move on to the installation process. The system designer must make sure to:

• Isolate VoIP traffic from data streams by building a Virtual LAN infrastructure
• Remove unnecessary hardware, routers, and switches from the points VoIP calls originate to the gateway exiting the LAN, as these hops increase latency
• Add rate-shaping and prioritization configurations to ensure that VoIP traffic takes precedence over other packets, especially at choke points like routers and firewalls

Once the VoIP system is in place, VLM tools are available for testing the system and measuring the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) or the general quality of the phone call and sampling frequency software for detecting intermittent problems.

Ongoing monitoring

The work does not stop after the VoIP system is installed and tested. Ongoing monitoring and testing would be necessary, especially if older hardware and cables that are liable to fail are used. In fact, the testing must be done regularly, so that possible failures can be anticipated and disruptions in service are at least minimized, if not totally avoided, particularly for businesses that are fully network-dependent.

The necessity of undertaking these elaborate steps cannot be overstated. After all, industry experts say that the chances of failure if the readiness assessment is skipped in a VoIP deployment stand at 50 percent. And even the other half that may successfully deploy VoIP without pretesting faces a 60 percent possibility of monthly service disruptions.

Saiju is an IP communications and business software expert. He specializes in SIP technologies like fully hosted VoIP PBX systems and free SIP proxy server options.