Current state network evaluation

VoIP capacity planning process starts with gathering network data and developing baseline of your existing network infrastructure. Each network device that will transmit data traffic has to be clearly identified. Without knowing your current network utilisation, it is impossible to accurately forecast how adding voice traffic will impact that utilisation. We perform a standard bandwidth monitoring using protocol analysers that provide good basic information on how much bandwidth you're using and help identify potential problems.

VoIP traffic forecast

Once you have a data traffic information, we can begin to forecast potential VoIP traffic that will actually impact your network. We perform a detailed analysis using a variety of VoIP-specific tools. We can monitor for VoIP problems such as jitter and delay. Jitter is the measurement of transit delay in voice packets and can be caused by many reasons.

PSTN connectivity

During our VoIP capacity planning, we'll need to determine if remote locations will continue to have PSTN connectivity or if that connectivity will be consolidated at a central location. All phone calls would pass through WAN links to a central location where the calls would proceed out the associated PSTN gateway. Centralising PSTN connectivity can simplify VoIP network planning and consolidating hardware can decrease costs and increase redundancy.

Hardware considerations

The last step is to carefully evaluate existing hardware infrastructure and future hardware needs. Adding VoIP to a network will increase overall traffic. We must ensure the network's core infrastructure and distribution-level points can handle the increase. All phones will establish 100Mbps, full duplex connections to the main switch. Most modern Ethernet hardware can currently support this connection type.