VoIP Readiness Assessment

Before and after a VoIP implementation, your internal IT staff, external network service company, or IP Office Techs, should perform a network VoIP readiness assessment.  This will involve:

• Checking your Ethernet Switches to see if they are capable of PoE and QoS
• Checking the type of cabling you have installed to see if you are Gigabit ready
• Checking how well cabling is terminated in the equipment room or closet and cables dresses
• Checking the house wiring plant to see if wall jacks and patch panels are labelled properly
• Checking the environmental elements of the room – temperature, humidity, threat of water damage
• Checking backup UPS power capability
• Checking space availability for a new system
• Checking what external features will be needed such as paging and door releases
• Collecting a count of phones and phone lines to adequately size a system
• Mapping out the payout of your network – what is connected to what – switches, routers, firewalls
• Who manages or programs all the above mentioned devices
• Connecting a Network Monitor laptop to check for any bandwidth heavy components which may be affecting your network’s performance, and thus a VoIP phone system ability to provide reliable service

Network Management and Issue Resolution

A VoIP system may be installed and working properly at the time of installation, but as time goes on and new people and network devices are added to the system, issues can crop up.  Printers, PC’s, Scanners and more can all act up and cause issues with the system.  Someone may add a new Ethernet switch or reconfigure how cabling interconnects the switches – all this can impact the intent of the design work done when the VoIP system was originally installed – to provide reliable and interruption free phone service.  

By installing QoS and PoE capable switches as recommended above, another key functionality is available to your IT person or chosen network vendor – the “managed QoS switch”. This allows a technician to log into a switch and view which devices on the network are acting up – throwing streams of un-needed data into the mix and effecting your phone systems reliability.  He/she can then use special software, called a network “sniffer”, to analyze the traffic coming and going from that device by connecting to a port on the switch called a “mirror” or “network probe” port, then coming up with a remedial plan to stop the offensive traffic, and restoring reliable communications.

Conclusion

By using a defined group of best practices, a company can take advantage of the many modern features of a VoIP phone system – and keep issues under control, both at installation time and into the future.  IP Office Techs provides this ongoing support as a value added service to our sales and installation teams.