Bringing VoIP to the SMB.pdf

Bringing VoIP to the SMB an Networking eBook Bringing VoIP to the SMB I f you're a smart businessperson, you're always looking for new ways to maximize efficiency and minimize costs. One of the ways you may be thinking about is trying out Internet telephony and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which lets you use the Internet to make and receive phone calls. Internet telephony isn't a new technology (it's been around for years in one form or another), but only in recent years has it become reliable and ubiquitous enough to be a serious choice for business. While Internet telephony was once an oddity often plagued by garbled and dropped calls, these days a well-planned and implemented VoIP system can provide call quality and reliability that rivals mobile phone or landline calls. The Benefits VoIP offers benefits over conventional telephony, and they generally boil down to lower cost, less complexity, and more advanced communication features. The technology's most noteworthy advantage (and the one that attracts the most attention initially) is the potential for savings on telecommunication charges. Conventional business phone service can be quite pricey when you consider the cost of multiple phone lines, additional charges for special features like three-way or conference calling, and the fact that most providers bill business calls by the minute (particularly for long distance). VoIP lets you conduct your voice calls across the same data network you use for everyday applications like Web access and e-mail, eliminating the cost of dedicated voice lines. Even better, VoIP providers typically don't charge extra for those added calling features, and most offer unlimited local and long-distance calling for a relatively low flat fee. (International calls often entail nominal per-minute charges.) It's not hard to see how VoIP will usually result in lower and more predictable phone bills for business. In addition to the lower-cost phone calls, VoIP imparts additional savings by reducing the complexity of your technology infrastructure. For example, when you eliminate dedicated voice lines, you no longer need to administer separate voice and data networks. Since each network has its own equipment and vendors, you'll likely pay less for ongoing capital investments and support services. Many VoIP service providers offer hosted PBX services that let you take advantage of advanced VoIP features without buying or maintaining any in-house equipment. Beyond saving you money, VoIP also has the potential to make you more productive by giving your communications a mobility it's never had before. Mobile phones already let you keep in touch on the road, but what if, instead of a separate phone number, you could take your office line with you when you travel? Take a VoIP phone on the road, and you can place or receive calls as if you were sitting at your desk from almost anywhere. Moreover, since your phone number is mobile as well, you can make "local" calls back home or call around the globe without worrying about cell phone roaming or hotel surcharges. How It Works To understand how VoIP works, it's helpful to compare it to conventional phone calls. When you place a "regular" phone call using the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN (also known as POTS, for Plain Old Telephone Service) it's known as a circuit-switched telephony, because it sets up a dedicated connection between two points for the duration of the call. VoIP on the other hand is known as packet-switched telephony, because the voice information travels to its destination in countless individual network packets across the Internet. This type of communication presents special TCP/IP challenges because the Internet wasn't really designed for the kind of real-time communication a phone call represents. Individual packets may - and almost always do - take different paths to the same place. It's not enough to simply get VoIP packets to their destination - they must arrive in a fairly narrow time window and be assembled in the correct order to be intelligible to the recipient. 1 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB To improve performance, VoIP employs encoding schemes and compression technology to reduce the size of the voice packets so they can be transmitted more efficiently. Audio signals are also digitally processed in order to accentuate the voice information and suppress background noise. To conserve bandwidth, VoIP systems stop transmitting during lulls in a conversation and even generate some "comfort noise" to forestall the eerie silence that might make you think the call was disconnected. VoIP uses a number of compression standards that offer different balances between packet size and audio quality. Generally speaking, the higher the compression the more simultaneous calls you can have, but the lower voice quality will be. The Right Foundation To get the most out of VoIP, you'll need an Internet connection that offers enough performance to accommodate an appropriate call volume for your company. A good rule of thumb is to have enough capacity for roughly one-third of your employees. If you have 30 employees, you should have enough capacity to allow 10 of them to be on the phone at any one time. Broadband Internet access is pretty common these days, and you may be wondering whether that super-fast cable modem or DSL connection you already have will work with VoIP. While cable and DSL connections are great for tasks like browsing the Web or streaming video, they're not always the best choice for VoIP, because most provide with lots of downstream (to your network) bandwidth and relatively little upstream (away from your network) bandwidth. Case in point: cable and DSL typically offer download speeds of several megabits per second, but most provide a mere fraction of that (sometimes as little as 128kbps) for uploads. This type of asynchronous connection is fine for the kinds of tasks cited above because they primarily involve one-way communication, but making calls over the Internet is quite different. For VoIP, upstream bandwidth is every bit as important as downstream, particularly if you plan to use more than just one phone. While a cable or DSL connection with sufficient upstream bandwidth might be acceptable for a telecommuter, home office, or sole proprietor, larger SMBs - or those that anticipate a lot of call volume - will want to consider a highspeed synchronous Internet connection like a T1 line. Although they can be a bit more expensive and offer somewhat slower download speeds than some business-class cable or DSL service, at 1.54 Mbps in each direction a T1 offers ample bandwidth to satisfy the requirements of both data and voice traffic. Henry Kaestner, CEO of Bandwidth.com, a telecom service provider for SMBs, says that organizations considering VoIP for critical communications should obtain their Internet connection and VoIP service from a single vendor, and look for one that makes a quality-of-service (QoS) pledge backed up with a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Businesses should only consider providers "that will pay you money if they don't deliver," says Kaestner. Kaestner's company offers a free online test to help determine an Internet connection's suitability for VoIP. It estimates how many concurrent VoIP calls your network might be expected to accommodate by measuring its bi-directional bandwidth (which may be significantly less than the network's raw upstream bandwidth) as well as latency (delivery delays that packets experience in transit). The test also checks to see if your network connection allows VoIP protocol traffic like SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol) to pass through it. Preparing for VoIP The key to success with VoIP ultimately comes down to proper planning. The scope of a VoIP implementation can vary according to an organization's needs and desires, ranging from the relatively straightforward - using VoIP for local and long-distance calls or to communicate between a company's multiple offices - to more complex deploy2 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB ments like call centers. In most cases, saving money immediately with VoIP won't require you to purchase any additional phone equipment or jettison what you already have, because devices called Media Gateways let conventional phone equipment (ranging from individual phones to an entire PBX) interface with your Internet connection. Taking advantage of VoIP's most cutting-edge features (like the ability to have your calls follow you as you travel) typically require specialized VoIP phones or other equipment and/or a hosted PBX service. Since many firewalls automatically block the TCP/IP ports used by SIP and MGCP, you may need to add a device to help your network to remedy this problem. These devices also improve VoIP performance by prioritizing voice packets over more mundane types of traffic so your calls aren't queued up behind, say, an e-mail upload. Bandwidth.com's Kaestener says that companies too often don't consider the impact that their local network performance will have on their VoIP experience. Since all VoIP traffic calls originate or terminate on the LAN, bandwidthhogging applications or inappropriate equipment (using hubs instead of switches) should be identified and corrected before they can negatively impact VoIP performance. Numbers Game People cheered when phone number portability for mobile phones finally became a reality last year. After all, having to forgo an established phone number can be enormously inconvenient for an individual. For a business, however, losing a long-held phone number known by your customers is nothing short of disaster. Switching an existing business phone number to a VoIP provider is possible, but the time frame for doing so can be measured in anything ranging from minutes to months. Check in advance to see whether your existing phone company has a number transfer agreement with your prospective VoIP provider. It can streamline the process considerably. The Pros and Cons of VoIP Integration The technology behind VoIP is fairly simple. With VoIP we use packet-switched data encapsulation (SDE) versus time division multiplex (TDM). This circuit switched telephony has been used since the dawn of time, or at least since the old fashion switch board operators like you might see in an old black and white I Love Lucy or Honeymooners episode where they would connect one caller to another by manually plugging the line into a huge wall of sockets. It will be quite some time before we completely do away with that type of POTS, Key Telephone System (KTS), and PBX switching, all of which have the ability to squeeze multiple phone calls onto a single copper line. For this reason, most businesses will look to integrating VoIP into their existing systems instead of totally replacing them. So it becomes important to understand the limitations of traditional telephony and to know where advancements in VoIP technology can make up for the shortfall. As long as you understand the fundamentals and you have an existing LAN, then you can start experimenting with this technology right away, and for little cost since VoIP is simply layered over TCP/IP so any hub-based or even wireless Ethernet LAN will allow you to start testing. You will soon learn that speed is the name of the VoIP game so the faster the network, the better the quality of the connection. When comparing VoIP to standard PBX type phone systems, you soon begin to see some of VoIP's disadvantages. For starters, when dealing with VoIP in high-utilization scenarios, quality of service (QOS) assurances become difficult to deliver, compared to an old fashioned PBX system. Quite often, the same scalability characteristics compa- 3 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB nies find attractive can ultimately be the reason their implementation of the technology initially fails. High-end VoIP networks, such as those in large calling centers or a corporate headquarters with thousands of users, can become so complex that QOS level guarantees become harder to assure versus the traditional circuit switched voice network that has clear and concise capacity restrictions built into the system and around which quality of service levels can easily be guaranteed and benchmarked. VoIP does make physical provisioning and installation much easier compared to a PBX installation, which requires a network of electrical wires, loops, and switches in order to function. A VoIP installation, on the other hand, will use your existing IP network so the logistics of building your VoIP network are largely simplified since the required physical elements are already in place. The key advantage to standardizing your IP-based network for data, applications, and now VoIP, is that your administrators will have only one network to maintain. This means supporting only a single network cabling system, rather than separate systems, one for voice and one for data. And if you choose to move to WiFi Ethernet then you don't even need most of the cabling. We can compare this scenario to the old school PBX administrators that will still need to be maintained for a separate local area-cabling network. This key advantage to consolidating your networks can also present a disadvantage since now you have the potential for a single point of failure. When your voice and your data networks are independent, one for data and one for the PBX system, their physical paths lay separately, thus protecting the voice system from failures isolated to the data network. There is also the constant possibility of a virus infecting your network. If this happens to a standalone data network then your employees can still make phone calls with the old school and isolated PBX network and continue data entry manually for a short time. When you combine these two networks, however, your VoIP phone calls may no longer be possible in this scenario. When your data fails, then so does your voice. Now let's take a quick look at the three main VoIP implementation scenarios that exist today. We start with the most popular setup, the hybrid. We will also look at the key benefits, the main pitfalls, and in what situation the implementation would be most beneficial. Hybrid IP Hybrid IP or IP-enabled VoIP installations will help lower your overall telephony charges. The key benefits to the hybrid IP setup include its ability to connect physically separated call centers over your existing IP network to form an integrated communication platform as well as providing that first step toward a pure IP VoIP installation, which will be the next scenario that we discuss. But before we do, some of the drawbacks to a hybrid setup are its lackluster scalability and the potential to get locked into vendor specific hardware or vendor applications. A company that is looking for a way to lower its toll and long distance charges should implement the hybrid setup. Pure IP Pure IP or end-to-end VoIP installations take full advantage of scalability and ease of management by combining both voice and data on the same network. This is the most cost-effective way to eliminate telephony fees, however, the initial cost could potentially be in the millions of dollars. Any enterprise with a large budget or having geographically diverse call centers (including overseas) would want to take advantage of this scenario. 4 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB Hosted IP The last and least common scenario is referred to as a hosted IP installation. This setup offers very few startup or setup costs. In fact, your call centers could probably start taking calls over IP in just a matter of days after signing with a vendor. This setup is also fully scalable and is usually integrated with your existing PBX system. As with the hybrid setup, however, you run the risk of being locked into vendor specific hardware or software. A hosted IP is a great alternative for smaller call centers with limited budgets and businesses with seasonal or short-term needs. Of course with other applications such as a VPN client, VoIP over your network moves your business another step closer to being fully remote and manageable. Clearly, the gains far exceed the few difficulties that it may impose to implement and maintain. Basically there is nothing a PBX system can do that a VoIP telephony system can't do better, even if the VoIP system winds up making administration a bit more complicated in the short term. IP telephony has come a long way since the days of the echofilled, patchwork of sounds that threatened to torpedo the nascent technology. Now, thanks to broadband and advances in transmitting audio over IP, it's rare to discern between a traditional voice call and one that's been packetized -- provided, of course, that it was deployed properly and throughput is abundant. VoIP also untethers workers from their desks and makes the process of fetching voicemails as easy as opening a message in Outlook. One typically overlooked aspect of IP telephony's impact on IT operations, however, is its role in disaster recovery efforts. The very features that make for a neat collection of bullet points in sales literature turn out to be instrumental in keeping companies humming when a disaster strikes. Catherine McNair, a Business Continuity Consultant with Avaya Professional Services, knows a thing or two about the role VoIP can play in a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. It's her job to guide clients toward deploying flexible IP voice platforms that can keep a company going in the aftermath of a destructive event. IP telephony is increasingly becoming a critical part of business continuity planning because of two main factors. The first is communication diversity, namely "giving yourself diverse ways to communicate to the outside world," says McNair. This diversity represents the multiple ways businesses can reach customers, partners and employees. These include voice calls that can traverse landlines, IP networks, and wireless networks, opening up the avenues in which parties can communicate should any one of those become unavailable. "Mobility gives a company and the employees the ability to work anywhere they can get network access," says. Rather than remain anchored to one voice platform, VoIP allows voice calls to take advantage of the redundancy of IP networks and the Internet to reach their intended recipients. This allows displaced workers to conduct business from home, hotels or remote offices until things settle down. As far as planning for a disaster, McNair offers some advice. First, she suggests that businesses "document what they currently have in place to help them recover." Success, she says, ultimately hinges on "planning and getting yourself prepared." Though it seems like a common-sense approach, this is where many organizations trip up. Usually, firms find the process "overwhelming because there's so much detail involved." Plus, there can be a certain of amount of institutional inertia that hinders the process. She finds that for many firms that "until a disaster happens there isn't a push." --Pedro Hernandez, EnterpriseITPlanet The Next VoIP System: Pure IP or Hybrid? As previously mentioned, VoIP solutions are available as hybrid, or converged IP-PBX products capable of supporting both TDM and IP communications, and the next generation of pure IP solutions, often referred to as softswitches. Pure IP solutions have all the advantages in a "greenfield" (i.e., starting from scratch) environment, including better economic value, ease of deployment, greater manageability, and standards-based architectural designs that enable integration into IT applications and processes. However, in the real world, each organization must weigh more than mere technological advantages in making a "pure IP" versus "hybrid" buying decision. Ultimately, the hybrid IP-PBX approach will be as passé as the plain old telephone systems. Likewise, IP-PBXs will eventually be no match for the new generation of highly integrated, IT-based voice applications. Pure IP solutions, as they mature, will overtake legacy solutions for their abilities to directly integrate with essential business process applications such as corporate 5 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB directories, CRM, ERP, and other critical back-office applications. "By 2009, enterprise telephony planners will have shifted away from the IP-PBX to a distributed open-voice application model," according to Gartner Inc. in an April 2005 publication, The IP-PBX is a Potential Architectural 'Dead End.' "Many IP-PBX products use a centralized and proprietary IP architecture to directly replicate the digital PBX model prevalent in the 1990s," Gartner's report observes. "This approach fails to leverage emerging Internet telephony standards and will not support a distributed and open telephony architecture." But for now, IP-PBXs continue to live on and, in fact, thrive. This is due in large part to basic business economics. Most enterprises find that it makes financial sense to preserve investments in existing TDM equipment. The hybrid approach lets them do just that. For each business, the decision to go hybrid versus pure IP depends on several factors, including the architecture of the existing voice infrastructure, the readiness of the IP network to support VoIP traffic, the IT department's ability to take on such a large project and, finally, how voice communications relates to overall strategic business goals. Whatever the deployment choice - pure or hybrid - all enterprise communications decision-makers should understand the overall advantages and disadvantages of the two main types of platforms. Here are seven tips that provide some basic guidance for the enterprise decision-maker: Tip 1: Know the Limitations of the Current Network Assets Anyone who has run a small VoIP pilot knows that it is essential to understand the network's readiness, including the switching and routing infrastructure, to support VoIP traffic. Decision-makers should also carefully review: • • • • Security policies and procedures, especially if mobile and remote users must be supported by the new system. Upcoming IT projects that may add traffic or otherwise impact network performance. VPN services and service level agreements (SLAs). Wireless Ethernet infrastructures if plans are to use WiFi phones or voice-enabled PDAs. There are many industry tools available, as well as a myriad of professional service offerings that are designed to help decision-makers assess network readiness. Tip 2: Hybrid Solutions are Essential for Some Businesses Businesses that plan to retain a significant percentage of analog or digital phones may have no other choice but to deploy a hybrid solution. Such companies may find it is simply not feasible, in the short term, to make the move to IP endpoints. For such companies, the best solution is to move to a hybrid approach. This will allow the organization to reap some of the benefits of VoIP while continuing to depreciate the value of current telephony assets. Tip 3: Branch Offices are Important Pure IP Test Labs VoIP deployments don't have to begin at corporate headquarters, even when the ultimate goal is to move the entire enterprise to a pure IP system. Unlike large IT projects such as ERP systems, CRM applications, and corporate databases, VoIP can start small. VoIP can be easily deployed at the edges of the enterprise and gradually expanded to replace legacy network environments. However, decision-makers need to make sure that, in deploying VoIP at branch locations, long-term goals are clearly understood. If the eventual long-term goal is a single, enterprise-wide VoIP system, architectures must be selected that can scale to cover the entire organization. 6 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB Tip 4: When Starting from Scratch, Choose All IP Organizations that are starting with a greenfield environment have no reason to invest in a hybrid architecture. The pure IP solutions available in the marketplace today are mature enough to provide reliable, feature-rich voice services. In addition, pure IP solutions have the added benefits of standards support, relative ease of deployment and administration and these solutions can be tightly integrated with IT applications and processes. Tip 5: IT Must Be Ready and Willing Before tackling any VoIP project, decision-makers must ensure that the organization's IT staff is ready to plan, deploy, and manage the system-whether it's a hybrid or a pure IP solution. Telecom and IT staffs should be merged into a single department before any VoIP migration plans are drawn. While much emphasis is placed on bringing a telecom staff up to speed on IP switching and routing, it is equally important for the IT staff to understand telecom technologies. For example, troubleshooting a trunking problem still requires familiarity with old-fashioned circuit-based telephony technologies. Also, providing end-user support means speaking in familiar telephony terms. This is especially significant if the project includes migration to a new voice messaging or unified messaging platform. Also, decision-makers should ensure the organization is making adjustments to its internal support processes and help desk functions. Two hours of e-mail downtime may seem reasonable to most end users, but they will probably demand much faster response times for a telephone outage. Tip 6: You Can Get Help Critical IT projects are never-ending, causing many businesses to put VoIP projects on the back burner even when such solutions could mean strategic advantages. IT bandwidth, it seems, is always stretched thin. Decision-makers should investigate VoIP deployments via a managed service or, at least, consider outsourcing some or all voice services and applications. Past choices for voice services were limited to purchasing or leasing a PBX or buying a Centrex solution from a telephone company. With IP-based systems, there are multiple options available that can help an enterprise limit capital expenses. All major carriers are offering some form of IP Centrex. In addition, cable operators, ASPs, systems integrators, and others are offering VoIP as managed services. Tip 7: Create a Map to a Long-Term Strategy IP-PBX architectural limitations will increasingly put organizations at a competitive disadvantage during the next decade. Disadvantages will become increasingly clear as unified communications applications and standards, such as SIP, grow more robust and provide tighter integration between business processes, desktop applications, and collaboration tools such as conferencing and presence. The economic benefits of centralized voice services and the strategic benefits of managing voice as an IT application will ultimately put the organization with IP-PBXs or hybrid systems at a distinct cost and competitive disadvantage. This does not mean that companies must move to a pure IP solution immediately. However, it does mean that any new technology investment must ultimately move the organization a step closer to the ultimate goal: an enterprise thriving on the next generation of pure VoIP systems. Getting Branch Office VoIP Deployments Right As VoIP catches on at companies of all sizes, many are pushing the technology out to their smaller offices and various home offices to reap the rewards of four-digit dialing, site-to-site calling, and other cost-saving and collaborative features. But experts warn preparation in five key areas is critical for success. 7 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB "Managing technology at branch offices and remote offices consumes a huge amount of IT budgets. If conceived, deployed, and managed correctly, voice over IP alleviates this financial burden," says Johna Till Johnson, founder of Nemertes Research in New York City. The conundrum for IT lies in the fact that 90 percent of employees work away from headquarters, yet IT is becoming increasingly more centralized, she says. In fact, in a recent study of 80 companies, Nemertes found that 34 percent of IT's time is spent dealing with branch office problems. The firm estimates that between $9,600 and $48,000 is spent per IT person per year to troubleshoot branch office issues. "What it takes to make voice over IP work is often underestimated and can lead to problems, so IT managers need to plan ahead," Johnson says. Here are some tips from Johnson and other voice over IP experts for guaranteeing a successful extension of your voice over IP network. Keep It Simple and Centralize Management "The days when companies could have IT staff at each branch-office location are long gone," Johnson says. "If IT designs a system where a user would have to run down the hall and grab a tech, that's not going to work. Voice over IP use in those locations should be no more difficult than plugging in a toaster," she says. "The beauty of voice over IP is that it allows you to be more nimble, more agile. You can easily scale up or down," says William Stofega, research manager for voice over IP services at IDC Corp. in Framingham, Mass. However, to gain this benefit, he says companies need visibility into their networks from a central location. Whether you're using a CPE solution or a hosted solution from a service provider, he says you should ensure that you have a console that allows you to troubleshoot from afar. "You don't want to have to hire someone to come out and service your gear or fix other problems," he says. You should be able to push out operating system upgrades, security patches, and other important updates without leaving headquarters. Johnson recommends rolling out tools that give you instant and constant visibility into how the VoIP network is performing. You should be able to tell whether the phones are up and running, where call quality stands, and if call cues are clear or congested. This will avoid user frustration and an overload of calls to the help desk. "If you make it too complex, the project will get choked up, stall and you'll lose all support and excitement," says Lou Nardo, director of product management at IP telephony monitoring and management software maker Qovia, Inc. in Frederick, Md. "Voice over IP requires different troubleshooting techniques that allow you to easily fix problems and move on." Create a Template for Rollouts "Each voice over IP implementation should have a unified look and feel," says Eric Paulak, managing vice president of network services and infrastructure at Gartner. He says companies should create a template for branch office rollouts that would make the process easier. Johnson agrees that templating your voice over IP deployments is mission-critical. "Create several templates that match the various sizes of your branch offices -- for instance, small, medium, and 8 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB large," she says. Within those cookie cutters, IT groups should blueprint the necessary facilities, networking, and equipment requirements. Once these blueprints are established, IT will be able to easily increase or decrease deployments depending on changes at each site. Johnson adds: "You need to keep tabs on what's going on within your organization so if it grows, you know what to change out." Consolidate Your Telecom and Networking Teams "A big advantage of moving to an all-IP network is that you can collapse down from having separate telecom and network functions to just network functions," says Rod Hodgman, vice president of marketing at Covergence, Inc., a developer of tools that secure and manage real-time services in Maynard, Mass. "When you do this, you can narrow down your team." He warns companies not to completely get rid of either brain trust. "Make sure you keep some people who have knowledge of telecom quality of service and other important information as well as those who can tie telecom functions into network management tools. You need both to look out for security, reliability and quality," he says. Nardo agrees that companies should consolidate their telecom and networking or data teams and cross-train them. "We see a number of companies that struggle bringing the two teams together over new technologies. The successful ones are where the data team has clear ownership," he says. Back Up and Cool Down "When you put voice over IP out to branch offices, you need to have emergency services," Johnson says. "The biggest issues are power and 911." IT teams must look carefully at wiring in branch offices because most don't feature the heating and cooling architectures necessary for voice over IP networks, she says. Because VoIP draws power over Ethernet from switches, you have to vastly increase the power capacity of your switches in wiring closets as well as your HVAC requirements such as ventilation and cooling. While Paulak believes that the technology is mature enough for companies to go all voice over IP, they should carefully consider that decision. "You can limit your use of traditional phone lines, but you don't want to eliminate them," he says. Because service is so inexpensive - around $20 per month for basic lines - he says you should maintain a few lines for disaster recovery and emergency services. Consider Future Uses for Your Network Now Nardo says that as you deploy VoIP, you should prepare for other applications that could take advantage of that infrastructure, such as videoconferencing. "While voice is the first widespread real-time application that we're seeing at the branch office, the next near-term one is video. IT groups are saying let's expand what we can do with IP and enable other programs," he says. For instance, he recommends tweaking the network for quality of service and performance levels associated with real-time video. 9 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB Stofega says that branch offices are a great next move for IT organizations looking to capitalize on their voice over IP investment. "I think voice over IP to the branch office is absolutely a good thing. It allows you to give everyone within an organization the same tools to conduct business. But the technology is still evolving, so you have to be smart about your deployments," he says. VoIP: The FAQs There are some things you'll want to know before taking the VoIP plunge, so we've prepared a list of the most frequently asked questions. What's the big deal about VoIP anyway, and why should I consider it? Currently, the biggest selling point for VoIP is the price. VoIP phone service is almost always less expensive than traditional phone service, and sometimes it's considerably cheaper. Most VoIP plans offer unlimited local and long distance calls for a flat fee (at least within the U.S. and Canada), as well as international calls to most of the rest of the globe for low per-minute charges. Prices and features vary widely by provider, though, so you should compare costs and features across several before deciding on one. (Some providers offer discounts to customers who commit to lengthy service plans or prepay for annual service.) Many VoIP plans also include calling features (such as Caller ID, three-way calling, and so forth) that are often feebased options with conventional phone service. VoIP services also tend to offer features you can't get with a regular phone line, such as the ability to check your voicemail messages from anywhere using a Web browser. Where can I get VoIP? There are lots of places to get VoIP these days. Most telephone and cable companies offer the service (though availability isn't universal), as do several well-known independent companies like Skype and Vonage. VoIP service and products are also available from countless smaller firms. How fast does my Internet connection have to be to support VoIP? There's no hard and fast rule, but generally speaking you should have a broadband connection with a minimum of 128K upstream in order to get acceptable call quality with VoIP. Remember, this refers to upstream - not downstream - bandwidth. If your prospective VoIP provider also happens to be your ISP, they should let you know if your connection is up to the task when you order. There are also a number of online speed tests available (www.testyourvoip.com is one) that will test your Internet connection performance - not just for upload and download speed, but for packet loss, latency, and other factors that can negatively impact call quality. As always, the fastest upstream connection possible can't hurt. Even if you have a relatively speedy upstream connection, your call quality can often suffer during things like file uploading or sending big e-mail attachments, because the VoIP traffic has to compete with those other applications. One way to minimize this problem is to use a router or add-on device that can prioritize outgoing traffic so that your phone calls always have first dibs on the connection. Will I be able to keep my existing phone number? Many VoIP service providers - though not all - are able to transfer your existing phone number to work with VoIP service. Although the provider almost always handles the process, it can still be complicated and slow. It can happen in days if you're lucky, but more likely it will take weeks, a month, or sometimes even longer. Transferring numbers is usually quickest and easiest when ordering VoIP service through your existing landline carrier. 10 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB Due to vagaries in the system for assigning phone numbers, there can be cases when certain phone numbers may not be transferable. DSL customers may also experience problems if they want to use their existing number with VoIP from a provider other than their phone company, because most telcos tie DSL to their traditional phone service (thus, transferring the number cancels the service). A small handful of telcos offer so-called "naked" DSL (DSL without conventional phone service), allowing customers to order VoIP service from the provider of their choice. Can I use my existing phone with VoIP? What about other phone-based devices like fax machines? A few VoIP providers - notably Skype - require that you use specialized phones. But almost all other providers supply a device - often called a VoIP gateway - that has one or more analog phone jacks that accommodate most conventional corded or cordless phones. When it comes to other devices that use a phone line, things get trickier. Take fax machines, for example, which are essentially analog modems that using audio tones to transmit and receive data. VoIP systems heavily compress audio information for efficient transport over the Internet, and since this can distort fax tones, it usually results in transmission errors. A similar situation occurs with other devices that contain analog modems, such as satellite TV set-top boxes and some TiVo digital video recorders (though many of the latter now support Ethernet or WLAN connections). Some VoIP providers are better at dealing with analog devices than others, so check with yours in advance if support for these devices is important to you. Will a VoIP phone work during a power failure? That depends. Although traditional phone lines provide the electricity necessary to run a telephone, VoIP equipment - either digital phones or the adapters for analog ones - often rely on power from a wall outlet. Some VoIP providers (typically major telephone or cable companies) offer equipment with a built-in battery backup that can keep your phones operating - at least for a few hours - in the event the power goes out. Even if your VoIP provider doesn't offer it, you can achieve the same result by connecting your VoIP equipment to your own UPS. Ideally, you'll want to keep any VoIP devices on a dedicated UPS so the battery will last as long as possible. Can I make 911 emergency calls over VoIP? Most VoIP services allow you to make 911 calls just as you would from a standard phone (Skype is an exception). But 911 calls made via VoIP are often treated differently than those placed from a conventional landline. From a standard phone, 911 calls automatically go to a local (and typically municipal) emergency dispatch center where the operator will be able to see your phone number and physical location - both critical pieces of data in case you're disconnected or unable to provide it. This is called Enhanced 911, or E911. However, there are technical and administrative challenges with connecting to local 911 networks through VoIP, and when you use VoIP to place an emergency 911 call, it may be routed to a call center in a different locale than where you live, that call center may be privately rather than government-run, and the operator may rely on you to provide your contact number and street address. Some of the larger VoIP providers include the E911 service, so you should verify the level of 911 services they offer before signing up. Even if your provider supports E911, it's critical that you keep your address information up-todate with them (i.e., if you move) - and be prepared to provide your current location if you're using your VoIP account away from home. There are also other issues you many want to consider with VoIP and 911 calls, such as the aforementioned possibility of a power failure as well as the fact that Internet connections aren't nearly as reliable as the now century-old public phone system. 11 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp. Bringing VoIP to the SMB This content was adapted from EarthWeb's Datamation Web site and internet.com's SmallBusinessComputing and EnterpriseITPlanet Web sites. Contributors: Joseph Moran, Mike Houghton, Sandra Gittlen, and Joan Vandermate. Internet.com eBooks bring together the best in technical information, ideas and coverage of important IT trends that help technology professionals build their knowledge and shape the future of their IT organizations. For more information and resources on networking, visit any of our category-leading sites: www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com www.instantmessagingplanet.com www.opticallynetworked.com www.practicallynetworked.com www.voipplanet.com www.wi-fiplanet.com www.opennetworkstoday.com For the latest live and on-demand Webcasts on networking, visit: www.jupiterwebcasts.com/networking/ 12 Bringing VoIP to the SMB, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2007, Jupitermedia Corp.