Voice over IP

1
Voice over IP
Voice over IP

• Are we there yet ?
• Presented by Mark Caswell, Empire Technologies,
  LLC.

2
Defining THERE

• Different types of solutions
• Reliability
• Scalability
• Security
• Proprietary Solutions vs. Open Standards
• VoIP Telephones
• VoIP Trunking
• VoIP Applications
• The answer to the question.

3
VoIP Solution Types

• Hosted
• IP Centrex
• Hosted IP Solutions (Vonage, etc)
• Large Carrier Offerings
• SIP Offerings Large and Small Carrier offerings
• Customer Owned
• Pure IP PBX
• Packet switched backplane
• Usually built on Data Networking Infrastructure
  (Switches, routers) and Servers
• Hybrid PBX
• TDM/Circuit Switched backplane
• Existing Proprietary PBX supporting open
  protocols
• IP Enabled using VoIP Protocol Components
• Example H.323 Gatekeeper/Gateway Model

4
RELIABILITY

• What are YOUR customers expectations concerning
  voice communications?
• How good is your Data Network ?
• What are the MTBFs Mean Time Between Failures
• Is the WAN fully or partially meshed ?
• Are there single points of failure ?
• Does the LAN support multiple paths ?
• How well is the Network supported ?
• How well is it managed from a performance point
  of view ?
• Can you add Quality of Service Management to the
  existing list of support responsibilities ?

5
Scalability

• Largely a question for Customer-Owned Solutions.
• How large is your total organization ?
• Small System solutions can range from 2 to 200
  Stations and trunks.
• Large solutions can support up to 36,000 Stations
  and trunks on a single pair of hot standby
  servers.
• Small solutions (under 20 stations) can also be
  peer to peer and provide advanced features.

6
Security

• Voice (Conversation) Security
• Old School Wire Tap vs. Vomit
• Voice Encryption only offered by some vendors
  for all devices, End to End
• Data/Server Security
• Denial of Service Attacks
• Operating System attacks - Viruses, worms,
  spyware, etc.

7
Proprietary Solutions vs. Open Standards

• Full Featured proprietary systems and phones do
  not typically work seamlessly with other vendors
  systems
• SIP Phones are Lowest Common Denominator
• The Open standard is interpreted by the vendor
• Limited feature set 16 SIPPING features
• Additional features are unique to the telephone
• Not all phones and features will work with all
  SIP systems

8
VoIP Telephones

• Proprietary IP Telephones
• Specific to a vendors solution
• Typically have a complete PBX feature set
• Cost between 100 and 750 each
• SIP Telephones
• Not vendor specific
• Limited feature set - SIPPING
• Cost between 20 and 300

9
VoIP Trunking

• PBX Site to Site Trunking
• Can save Long Distance costs and share Data
  Networking Infrastructure
• Should include fail-over/over-subscription
  mechanism for re-routing calls
• SIP trunking
• PSTN Access
• Very cost effective
• Should also make sure PBX can re-route if
  necessary
• Several large players Global Crossing, ATT

10
VoIP Applications

• The REALLY GOOD Reason for using VoIP!
• Productivity applications
• Call Center / Computer Telephony Integration
• Mobility Applications
• Database access
• Integration with existing business operations
• Temporary Operations or Locations

11
The Answer

• YES
• if it is planned and executed properly