Beginning VoIP Design

Before running a series of tests on your LAN, design and structure it as efficiently as possible so that you can eliminate many issues caused by packet collision and design, allowing you to focus on the bandwidth, hardware, and cabling as your only remaining variables after testing begins. topic 5 covers the individual elements used to design an efficient VoIP network; in this section, I present those elements in a plan for deployment. Following these steps provides you a well-built network in in which you use your bandwidth and hardware as efficiently as possible:
1. Remove unnecessary hops.
Eliminate any unnecessary routers, switches, and hardware between where the VoIP call originates and where it finally hits the PSTN.
You can’t control how your Internet provider routes the call, but you can eliminate unnecessary hardware within your LAN.
2. If you’re deploying VoIP on an existing LAN by using the same cabling, switches, and routers, build the network infrastructure for your VoIP traffic as a Virtual LAN.
Isolate the VoIP traffic from your existing data network as much as possible. If the data packets don’t even know the VoIP packets exist, the data packets can’t as easily get in your way.
3. When you have your VoIP traffic on its own LAN, give the voice packets their own section of bandwidth from any other packets that may be riding with them as an additional refinement in your LAN design.
The implementation of rate shaping is most important at choke points in your network, such as firewalls, where the data and VoIP traffic both hit the same piece of hardware.
4. Add prioritization to your routers and firewalls to ensure the voice traffic receives the best treatment.
Add this prioritization to network choke points so that the VoIP traffic isn’t incurring latency waiting on lower-importance data traffic.

You need to hire a LAN professional to deploy these requirements, but it’s money well spent. A clean and efficient network requires less bandwidth and hardware to support it.