Common VoIP Myths

Recently our manager of sales engineering, Charles Thompson, gave a talk on popular misconceptions surrounding VoIP. I thought I would discuss the top three myths.

Myth #1: Running VoIP without Quality of Service is acceptable
When implementing VoIP administrators often fail to consider issues of contention. It is critical to have the ability to set precedence for VoIP traffic. Failing to do so, opens up the possibility of interference from other applications on the network known as contention. Contention leads to common VoIP performance problems including jitter and packet loss. Throwing bandwidth at contentions problems doesn’t solve the issue. Even a network with large bandwidth capacity can have poor call quality due to network contention.

You also need to set precedence appropriately for all connections that compose the VoIP call including call set-up and tear-down. A common mistake is to set highest precedence for the conversation and neglect the other components of a call.

Myth #2: No VoIP site survey is necessary
When implementing VoIP, one of two decisions is usually made. Rather than conducting a site survey, IT managers will either keep network conditions the same and add VoIP, or they may choose to upgrade their bandwidth capacity and then roll out VoIP. The choices lead to performance problems after the deployment. These problems result in poor call quality and users who become resistant to using VoIP. You can read more about detecting network problems through pre-deployment surveys in an earlier post.

Myth #3: Voice conversations are secure
End-users and network engineers may not consider the security ramifications of a hacker or any other user using a tool to not only capture but play back VoIP conversations. Higher-end VoIP systems may offer ways to encrypt the data, but lower-end products often do not. You’ll want to consider this before you purchase a solution. Second, VoIP traffic is usually most vulnerable on the LAN since Internet WAN traffic is typically routed through VPNs.

Additional VoIP Resources
Improve VoIP performance with monitoring – SearchNetworking.com
Know your network before implementing VoIP – Network World
Predeployment Testing – Network Observations
Network Instruments Observer and VoIP – Network Instruments
In-depth information on VoIP Performance Management – Network Performance Daily

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• VoIP and Predeployment Testing
• Securing VoIP Calls
• Calculating VoIP Bandwidth Consumption
• VoIP performance testing fundamentals