If you receive errors when attempting to view this white paper, please install the latest version of
Adobe Reader.
"
Quintum has developed a complete line of intelligent Tenor
VoIP access switching and gateway solutions that are deployed in enterprise and service provider networks around the world."
Source : Quintum Technologies
Extending VoIP to Remote Locations: Challenges and Solutions
IP PBX is also known as :
Business VOIP PBX,
Buy IP PBX,
Compare IP PBX,
Hosted IP PBX,
Hosted PBX,
IP Pabx,
IP PBX Appliance,
IP PBX,
IP PBX Cost,
IP PBX Equipment,
IP PBX Comparison,
IP PBX Features,
IP PBX Hardware,
IP PBX Hosting,
IP PBX Manufacturers,
IP PBX Market,
IP PBX Phone,
IP PBX Price,
IP PBX Pricing,
IP PBX Provider,
IP PBX Review,
IP PBX Reviews,
IP PBX Sales,
IP PBX Service,
IP PBX Software,
IP PBX Solution,
IP PBX Support,
IP PBX System,
IP PBX Vendors,
IP PBX Voice.
In the early days of VoIP, the central issue facing
the industry was whether voice quality could
be effectively maintained using IP as the transport.
Technology vendors, service providers and
corporate network managers put a huge amount
of effort into addressing this issue. As a result,
VoIP is now an attractive alternative to conventional
analog voice and the PSTN.
As real-world VoIP rollouts continue, however, a
new set of challenges emerging. In particular,
businesses are encountering a variety of unanticipated
problems as they deploy VoIP to
remote locations. These problems include:
Survivability
One advantage of an IP PBX or hosted PBX/Centrex solution is elimination of the need
to install a PBX in each remote location. But
this kind of centralized architecture leaves
phone service unacceptably vulnerable to network
failure.
Analog support
Remote offices often require support for a wide
range of "legacy" analog devices such as postage
meters, security systems and HVAC monitoring units with built-in modems - as well as fax
machines, intercoms and non-IP phones. All-IP
environments don't provide this support.
PSTN connectivity
For inbound calls, local call and 911 access,
it's typically important to provide remote
office with PSTN connectivity. This connectivity
must therefore be planned into
any VoIP implementation - rather than considered
only as an after thought.
Management
Centralized IT departments and service providers
need to be able to effectively manage VoIP infrastructure
at remote locations. If they can't, voice
service levels can easily be jeopardized.
This white paper outlines the remote office challenges
that are coming to light as more and
more companies implement VoIP across the
enterprise. It also explains how these challenges
can be overcome. By keeping these concepts
in mind as they plan their VoIP deployments,
corporate IT departments and service
providers alike can avoid the pitfalls experienced
during the first wave of implementations.
The survivability issue
It's a given that voice service is absolutely critical
to every business. That's why so many companies
hesitated to deploy VoIP for so long.
They were not going to entrust their voice service
to any architecture that couldn't ensure reliable,
consistent voice quality.
Advances in VoIP technology and the continued
evolution of underlying enterprise IP infrastructure
have largely addressed those concerns.
VoIP implementers can now have a high degree
of confidence that their networks and their VoIP
hardware can now deliver the quality-of-service
necessary for day-to-day business communications.
However, like any other networked application, VoIP remains vulnerable to device failure. VoIP
functionality in remote offices is particularly
vulnerable to failures that result in loss of
access to the central IP PBX. Such failures can
occur in any number of places: at the remote
office's point-of-access to the WAN, on the WAN
itself, on the LAN where the IP PBX is located,
within the IP PBX, etc. If a problem at any of
these points disrupts connectivity between users
in the remote office and the IP PBX, voice service
ceases to exist - and the business obviously
suffers serious consequences.
It is important to distinguish this survivability issue from that of general voice quality. During
the first wave of VoIP adoption, concerns about
general voice quality arose from the variability
in IP network performance (i.e. the latency, jitter
and packet loss that are endemic to LANs and WANs). Even if these issues are overcome, survivability
remains a problem - because an outright
failure in any device along the path
between a business user's phone and the IP PBX
will make it impossible for that user to make or
receive a phone call.
The survivability issue exists because VoIP environments
are designed to share a single, central
IP PBX. This central IP PBX may be located at
corporate headquarters, or it may be located at
a service provider's facility as part of a hosted IP
PBX service or IP-based Centrex offering.
Either way, all of the intelligence required to
route and manage calls resides at a single device
- thereby creating multiple potential single
points-of-failure along the path between that
device and remote users.
Any organization seeking to ensure the reliability
of VoIP service must thus confront the survivability
issue. Otherwise, the business will
remain vulnerable to the loss of phone service at
remote offices.
The analog support issue
When organizations implement VoIP, they
are often so obsessed with ensuring the
reliability and quality of basic phone/voice
service that they forget or minimize the
importance of the many other business
requirements that their analog telephony
infrastructure supports.
First and foremost among these is typically the
analog fax machine. While many companies have adopted digital fax machines and/or the
use of scan-and-attach email solutions to transmit
hard-copy documents, the analog fax
machine remains a staple of business communication.
It is thus essential that any VoIP implementation
plan accommodate this entrenched
day-to-day business tool.
However, there are also often many other devices
that rely on the availability of an analog network
connection. These include postage meters, security
systems, and environment control systems
that use built-in modems to communicate with a
central command console and/or an outside monitoring
service. They also may include intercom
and/or PA systems that have to interface with
users' desk phones.
There are several reasons that these analog
devices can be more commonly found in remote
offices than in corporate headquarters. For
example, companies that centralize their facilities
management operations will use such devices
to monitor conditions in remote offices - even
though no such devices are used in the company's
headquarters. Also, the kinds of warehouses and
manufacturing plants that use intercoms are typically
remote, rather than co-located with headquarters.
And remote offices may lag technologically
behind a main corporate office.
That's why companies should rigorously inventory
analog devices across the enterprise before
committing to a VoIP implementation plan. And
those analog devices must be appropriately accommodated if the VoIP implementation is to
be completed without disruption to the business.
The PSTN connectivity issue
In addition to supporting analog devices in remote
offices, corporate VoIP implementations must also
typically factor in the need for analog PSTN connectivity
to the outside world. This connectivity is
required for access to 911 emergency services, for a
local presence to receive inbound calls, and for
allowing outbound local calls. In some cases, it may
also be appropriate as a failover measure in the
event of a WAN failure.
However, it is again not unusual for these
requirements to be neglected amid more dominant
concerns about optimally engineering
intra-enterprise voice over the IP network. So
PSTN connectivity often emerges as an afterthought.
Unfortunately, this after-the-fact approach to
the necessity of the PSTN can result in overly
expensive and/or ill-conceived solutions. So,
although PSTN utilization may not represent a
major piece of the total enterprise telephony pie,
it can create disproportionate costs and problems
if not adequately considered beforehand.
The management issue
Finally, it is essential for VoIP implementers to
fully take into account the need for effective
management of VoIP infrastructure at remote
offices. Most IT organizations have tools in
place for monitoring IP network infrastructure in remote office. However, this is not sufficient
for ensuring the ongoing health of voice service
across the data network, because IT staff at
headquarters must be able to do more than just
assess whether or not there is a congestion problem
or switch malfunction on some remote network
segment. They must also be able to
remotely and granularly monitor, diagnose and
configure specific attributes of VoIP-enabling
devices themselves.
This is sometimes made difficult by the use of
NAT (network address translation) on remote
office firewalls - which can impede access and promising IT security. It also requires fulfillvisibility
into remote VoIP devices. An effective
ment of the other usual requirements for remote
device management - including scalability, reliability
and ease-of-use.
Also, many IP PBX vendors require the installation
of servers in branch offices. These servers act as
sort of "mini-PBXs" and therefore require more
than a nominal amount of administration. This
adds to overall cost of ownership and introduces
another potential source of service problems - since
technicians may neglect to perform certain tasks or
perform them incorrectly.
Addressing remote-office VoIP issues with
Quintum switching solutions
Quintum's Tenor VoIP switching solutions are
specifically designed to address all of these
crucial remote-office implementation issues.
Their features and functionality, which have
been driven by years of real-world VoIP
deployment success, ensure that even inexperienced
VoIP planners can meet their company's
business needs - including those that
can unexpectedly crop up when extending
VoIP services to remote offices.
Survivability
Quintum's switching platform safeguards
voice service availability by embedding a
SIP proxy agent in the remote-office switch. This allows basic essential calling
functions to continue even if the connection
to a central or hosted IP PBX is lost. This
proxy agent provides sufficient routing
intelligence to provide users with dial-tone
to the desktop and allow basic calling capabilities
and features - although some of the
more sophisticated functions provided by
the PBX (such as conferencing) may be
temporarily unavailable.
Quintum switches also provide hot failover
to the PSTN in the event that the IP network
can no longer support adequate voice
quality. This transparent, automatic
failover offers still another level of protection
of essential voice services.
The local SIP Proxy Headquarters
embedded in the
Tenor S provides survivability
of the voice
network. Connectivity
for intra-office calls,
inter-office calls, local
calls, and 911 are
maintained even in
the event of an IP
failure.
Analog support
Quintum switches can be readily configured to
provide as many analog ports as required to support
"legacy" communications devices - including
fax machines, non-IP phones, and the various
types of modem-enabled systems in common
use today. The switches readily and efficiently packetize this traffic so it can be transported
over the enterprise network - ensuring that convergence
initiatives incorporate the full range of
any company's communication needs across all
remote locations.
The Tenor can be deployed to connect a traditional PBX in a branch office to the IP-PBX, then at a later date when
the traditional PBX is removed and IP-phones are deployed the Tenor remains as the branch office gateway.
PSTN connectivity
In addition to providing an "on-ramp" onto the IP
network for analog devices, Quintum switches
provide an "off-ramp" for packetized voice onto
the PSTN. This ensures the ability of every user
to access 911 emergency services. It also allows calls to be made and received via the local loop.
Plus, as noted above, this PSTN connectivity provides
a ready failover capability in the event of
IP network problems.
Tenor can interface new IP-PBXs to provide intelligent connectivity for legacy voice equipment and connectivity to the PSTN.
Management
Quintum provides a Remote Management
Session Server (RMSS) that allows IT teams to
easily and securely manage distributed Tenor
VoIP switches from a single, intuitive application.
The RMSS provides the complete system
configuration, performance monitoring, diagnostics,
troubleshooting and remote upgrade
functionality needed to maintain and optimize
the health of VoIP services - including switches
behind NAT firewalls. Switches can be
remotely managed via telnet, FTP or
Quintum's own graphical Tenor Management
Console. All communications between RMSS
and remote switches are encrypted to ensure
network security. And each switch can be registered
with two separate RMSS Application
Servers to provide redundancy.
In addition, the Tenor switches themselves don't
require nearly the same amount of care and
attention as the typical IP PBX vendor's remoteoffice
server. Once they are configured, they
pass signaling through to the central IP PBX
and are therefore transparent to IP end-points -
so new phones can be installed by simply pointing
them at the switch. This greatly reduces
remote office management workloads.
Just as important as these individual attributes
is the fact that Tenor switches provide survivability,
analog support and PSTN connectivity in
a single, self-contained package. Alternative
solutions typically require some combination of
a switch, a gateway device, and/or a dedicated
server. Such multi-device approaches increase workloads. With Quintum's Tenor switches,
installation and ownership are both simple and
cost-efficient. This is a vital consideration for IT
organizations that have limited resources and
many pressing challenges to face besides VoIP
implementation.
RMSS sits on the public, or service provider, network and acts as a bridge between the
Tenor and the management tools, allowing Network Administrators/Customer Support to
manage access gateways anywhere.
The benefits of Quintum's survivable approach
to remote office VoIP include:
- Optimized reliability of voice service to all locations
- Lower capital provisioning costs
- Lower long-term technology ownership costs
- Undisrupted end-user work environments
- Elimination of VoIP project "surprises"
- Secure protection of network infrastructure
- Flexible support of changing remote office requirements
VoIP can offer significant telecom cost savings,
the convenience of managing one network
instead of two, simplified provisioning of services
to remote locations, and the ability to deploy a
new generation of converged applications. But
it can also create all kinds of problems for IT
project teams, especially as they extend VoIP to
remote offices. Quintum's Tenor switching solutions
prevent these problems simply and economically
- enabling businesses to reap maximum
returns on their convergence investments and
avoid the hassles that have plagued enterprise
VoIP roll-outs.
About Quintum
Headquartered in Eatontown, NJ, Quintum
delivers VoIP solutions that bring the reliability
and voice clarity of public telephone networks
to Internet telephony. Quintum's intelligent
VoIP access solutions integrate easily into
existing PBX and IP infrastructures, making
them the ideal choice for service providers and
enterprise alike. According to In-Stat, Quintum has the secondlargest
marketshare in the low density VoIP market.
The company was picked by Forbes for its "Top
Ten To Watch in 2005" list of top privately-held
technology companies and was ranked number 205
on the INC. 500 list of fastest growing private companies.
Quintum is also a Nortel Developer Partner
and an Avaya DevConnect Partner.
Quintum sells its switches worldwide through its direct sales force and a network of resellers and
distributors. For more information, call 1-877-SPEAK IP (1-877-773-2547), 1-732-460-9000 outside the US,
or visit us online atwww.quintum.com