Is VoIP Really Worth It? Part 4

Mark Allen

Reliability Rules Despite technological advances, migrating to IP telephony is not a move to be taken lightly. Performance lags that would go unnoticed on a data network can significantly degrade IP voice quality. Bill Erdman, director of product management in Cisco's Enterprise Voice and Video Business Unit, says that the onus falls on IT departments to keep their networks in top working condition.

"You need to run a tight ship in the IT organization," Erdman emphasizes. "[IT departments] have to have a consistent policy on how they will prioritize applications and telephony."

In fact, the lack of traffic prioritization on the public Internet is a key reason why IP telephony exists primarily within private networks. IT organizations can deploy equipment and software to ensure a satisfactory level of service on their managed networks, but no such capability exists on the Internet.

Camp believes that IP coverage and service quality on public networks is too spotty for businesses to tolerate. "If I've got six offices and they are all on Sprint's backbone and Sprint will offer 50- or 60-millisecond delivery, then okay," he says. "But if you pass from AT&T to UUNet to Genuity, all bets are off."

Despite these problems, an emerging standard known as multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) promises to deliver high-quality voice capability over the public Internet. In essence, MPLS lets systems create virtual switches over the network, creating a stable pathway that eliminates delay.

The sticking point, says Camp, is that support for MPLS must be designed into Internet routers. "From a technical perspective, MPLS sounds like a wonderful solution. From a reality perspective, how many routers have to be replaced to make this [system] fairly ubiquitous?"

That is not to say that you can't make IP telephony work for you on the PSTN. Using advanced equipment and software, an employee working in Atlanta can call a vendor in Seattle and have that call routed through a corporate gateway in Bellevue, Washington. A coast-to-coast connection becomes a local call.

Cray's Stephens says that his company is saving $1000 to $2000 per month by routing calls from the Wisconsin office through Cray's Mendota Heights, Minnesota, facility. Not only are interoffice calls handled by the wide area network, but calls made to other companies in the Twin Cities region hop off the WAN and become local calls as well.

Camp also urges companies to carefully consider equipment choices. "Think about a call to 911," he says. "Okay, I've got an IP address. How does that tie into the 911 database so the emergency crews can find us? How do you do caller ID if it's gatewayed through an IP network?"

Future Proof While the reality of making end-to-end IP-based calls over the Internet remains years removed, businesses can achieve big gains by converging phone networks with managed local and wide area networks. Access to advanced features, intuitive user and management interfaces, and the ability to use the corporate WAN to bypass the PSTN combine to make IP telephony a compelling option. Factor in the considerable cost savings of maintaining a single network and network staff, and the math for IP telephony seems to add up.

"We sold the system to our executives on the futures," says Cray's Stephens. "The potential is so big...that if you're thinking about a PBX upgrade you really need to think about this."

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