Explaining the components and process involved in an IP Telephony Assessment You’ve studied the promising ROI’s for IP Telephony and researched vendor solutions that appear to fit your company’s needs. If you’ve done your homework, you also know that merging voice and data networks into one integrated network is a complex undertaking that requires careful analysis of existing infrastructure.

The success of a new IP Telephony implementation depends on the capability of its existing network components. So from the data network side, every device that is expected to carry application traffic needs to be tested and benchmarked, from the WAN to the LAN. These devices include routers, switches, servers, gateways and VPN, to name a few. More often than not, these devices are not IP Telephony-ready and will require upgrading, modifying or replacing. Testing will help to confirm and validate this need.

This critical first step is conducted by a Network Engineer and will determine will what kind of traffic patterns occur throughout the day; peak utilization times might warrant increased amounts of bandwidth to support IP Telephony, for instance. Other factors studied are type of users and traffic, their priority, packet types, application usage and transmission problems. Because IP Telephony is sensitive to time and delay, the existing network design will also be assessed for ways to make routing more efficient.