VOIP REPORT

VOIP Report



Executive Summary/Overview

The company wishes to develop a more structured approach to site assessment, and I have been given the task of developing a portable, automated site assessment tool which will be taken to the company's site, connected to their network and will collect the required information, conduct some tests, producing an overall result which indicates whether the site is suitable for such activity, what modifications to the network might be needed, and what new equipment will be installed. This proposed design includes the capability to connect to a range of network technologies, and be able to assess the suitability of those different technologies. In this proposed design, I have developed a more complete specification, which includes screen shots of suitable tools, design documentation, program fragments, a user interface design etc. IP Telephony or Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is hot, with many organizations either trying it or planning to in the near future. But there is already enough experience to know that just throwing VOIP on the network to see if it works can produce undesirable results. The real measure of the performance of IP-telephony systems, and of the underlying network, is how well the applications' requirements and users' expectations are met. The challenge to network engineers is to find ways to overcome the VOIP-killing impairments found on data networks and meet expectations. When voice and data are merged into a converged network, that is asking a network that is prone to throwing things away to provide service to an application with very different traffic characteristics and requirements.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary/Overviewii

Background study1

Learning Outcomes3

Discussion3

VoIP techniques5

VoIP architectures and protocols5

The role of the softswitch and the IMS in VoIP deployments8

VoIP traffic in shared channels10

Quality of service in VoIP networks11

Features of VoIP networks12

Services provided13

Telephone number translation13

Number portability14

Access to emergency services14

Security issues16

Additional systems17

Interconnection of VoIP networks17

references18

Interface for the interconnection18

Conclusions19

References21

Appendices25

Designing VOIP Network Architecture

Background study

The rapid evolution of VoIP communications has allowed corporations to better serve customers and compete more effectively but VoIP implementation is a major challenge since even the most seemingly simple changes could adversely affect your network performance.  As stated in the Gartner March 2009 research report Ignore IP Telephony Network Assessments at Your Own Risk, "Through 2012, 70% of enterprises that do not perform an initial network assessment will experience service problems, unplanned additional costs and time delays." ¹  It is essential to identify and resolve service and readiness problems across the entire network prior to any deployment or expansion of an existing VoIP network.

Integrating voice and data on the network involves more than simply buying VoIP phones and a call manager, configuring and installing them, then hoping for the best quality. When looking at network readiness for data applications, network bandwidth and server resources are often the only items that come under consideration. However, with voice services, there are more variables to consider before they can be deployed on the network, most importantly QoS, or Quality of Service. Conducting a pre-deployment network readiness assessment will save time and ...