Voice Readiness Assessment                               (PDF version)

Overview

More & more businesses are migrating to voice over IP these days. Convergence offers the possibility of reducing costs and infrastructure maintenance headaches while providing access to the latest in voice, video and collaborative networking. Deploying these new applications in the manner of a traditional application however will not be successful. VoIP may be a data application but it does not behave like a typical data application. Moreover, it is often the highest profile application in an enterprise. When the phones are not working properly, everyone knows.

Combat’s VoIP Readiness Assessment (VRA) will help you get it right, right from the start. It will provide an understanding of the current behavior of your network and the impact introducing VoIP will have. Importantly this will include the impact that voice may have on existing critical data applications as well as data’s impact on voice.

A VRA from Combat Networks uses data from a variety of sources to develop a complete view of the network. Utilization statistics from SNMP and RMON will be gathered to establish network baselines and build performance requirements. Fluke Networks tools generate synthetic calls and monitor network latency, jitter and loss, providing MOS or R value scores to assess quality. Concurrently, network performance management tools actively monitor application traffic and test actual applications and servers. This enables Combat to analyze the interaction among the critical applications. Passive performance information from IP PBX’s, gateways and other network components will also be evaluated.

By following the VoIP ‘best practices’ throughout the VoIP lifecycle, will help keep your VoIP at optimum performance. The four factors you should consistently follow are:

Baselining of the bandwidth and performance requirements

Adding the VoIP calls

Management and monitoring of the converged voice and data

Highlights of the VRA Include:

o        Remote based Assessment (Onsite Option is also available)

o        Simulated Testing based on appliances deployed at the network device level

o        Multiple simulated synthetic VoIP calls

o        Passive Monitoring of  performance

o        Report of conditions that affect service quality

o        MOS, CoS settings and degradation factors; Delay, packet loss and jitter

o        Concurrent number of VoIP calls over each link

o        Recommend corrective actions to improve MOS score.

How A Remote assessment Works

Combat utilizes Fluke Networks tools to remotely monitor and analyze your network. Distributed probes gather data that is retrieved securely over a VPN tunnel by a dedicated server and examined by Combat’s in-house engineering team. Combat can scale the solution to match even the largest networks. Monitoring can take place end-to-end, on any individual segment and anywhere in between.

Testing Methodology Used

Simulated Testing

The Fluke appliance allows Combat to both passively monitor the network as well as generate synthetic calls to simulate traffic. This allows us to measure VoIP call quality and capacity. It allows us to see your network under simulated load situations, testing and stressing all components and the QoS. This approach allows us to provide Industry standard measurements for MOS, R Factor, Jitter, Packet Loss or Delay to be examined. If the call quality is above acceptable the networks is deemed ready.

Deliverables

Combat’s VRA Service deliverables include:

Conclusion

In today’s converged world, you need to take a multi-faceted approach to successfully deploy a VoIP network. As an absolute necessity, you will require the up-front assessment to establish a baseline as the first step, but this by itself, is not a guarantee for a successful deployment. Ongoing monitoring and management are keys to maintaining a solid VoIP infrastructure.