Cloud-Based Voice Services – The Technical Challenges.
Voice in the cloud – the technical challenges
What is VoIP?
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is the communication protocols that allow for the transmission of
voice communications over the internet. In contrast to telephone calls that are made over the Public
Switched Telephone Network, where a connection is made between two points so that a call can be made, VoIP works by converting speech into tiny packets of data so that it can be transmitted, and then
reassembled at the destination.
Broadband connectivity
The primary technical challenge that requires consideration when implementing cloud based VoIP services into a business is the broadband connection that is within the business. The reason why this is so important is because VoIP services require a stable connection in order to transmit the data packets of a call successfully. If both voice and data services are run over the same connection, there is always the risk that if the demand for bandwidth increases due to somebody downloading or uploading a large file, then this can interfere with the time it takes for the packets of data of the voice call to be delivered to the end point – leading to packet loss and jitter on the call.
There are a number of things that businesses are able to do in order to overcome this issue so that VoIP telephony is able to provide a reliable and stable solution.
- Installation of a dedicated broadband connection
Instead of running both voice and data down one broadband connection, the majority of businesses that use VoIP will install a separate connection that would be dedicated for voice traffic in order to avoid any degradation of sound quality. Once this voice connection has been installed, then the only thing that requires monitoring is the capacity of this connection to ensure that it is big
enough to handle the amount of calls that are made and received. - Installation of VLAN on a switch
A VLAN is a configuration that is applied to the switch that enables a business to control the
amount of capacity that can be used by specific ports on the switch. As a result, a business could
easily specify that one port is reserved for voice and another is for data. Each of these ports
would also have a user defined capacity for each port. For example, 2Mb for voice and 8Mb for data.