Note: This is the second in a series of articles discussing business VoIP decisions.

Voice over IP (VoIP) service can be extremely demanding on your company’s network.  If you network designers had foresight and installed significant excess capacity, making the switch to a business VoIP solution will be easy.  But it already takes you five minutes to download an e-mail, VoIP is probably not for you.

VoIP service places heavy demands on your network infrastructure.  High quality voice conversations require the transmission and receipt of large volumes of Internet traffic.  If your company has a dozen salespeople working the phones most of the day, this is going to be a major tax on your network.

Unlike other Internet applications, such as data transfer or Web browsing, VoIP traffic is live, extremely time sensitive and unforgiving.  Minor packet loss and retransmission is unlikely to cause much disruption in most business applications, however it can have severely negative affects on VoIP phone call quality.

When considering a business VoIP solution, ask the following questions:

• Is there sufficient free capacity on our Internet connection?
• What is the status of the network infrastructure inside the firm: capacity and capabilities of routers, switches, cabling to and from computers (both the rated capacity and condition of the cables – cables degrade over time)?
• Are there high-throughput demanding applications being run on the network currently?
• At times when there is heavy VoIP service traffic, are there any mission-critical Internet applications that will be affected?
• Can the IT staff support a VoIP system?

When you’re in this stage of the process of considering a business VoIP solution, start out by taking a full inventory of your network, then rate it against the questions above.  You may find some areas of your network that need work even if you don’t make the switch to VoIP service.

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