VoIP phone service is significantly different than traditional phone service.  While these differences provide advanced features and significant cost savings, they also bring along some new requirements.  We have listed below the various areas that need to be addressed for a successful VoIP deployment.

Internet connection 

Bandwidth requirements

• Do you have enough Internet bandwidth to handle both data and voice traffic?  Because VoIP technology uses your Internet connection to send and receive phone calls, you need make sure there is capacity to handle this additional traffic.  We recommend calculating at least 88 kbps per concurrent VoIP call.  If your bandwidth is limited, we recommend using the G.729 codec which will reduce the size of each call to 32 kbps.
  

Prioritize voice traffic

• Voice traffic is very sensitive to delay and congestion in the network.  While you may not notice these symptoms while browsing a web page or checking your email, it can become a real problem with VoIP connections.  You will hear the sound quality deteriorate, with the possibility of even dropping the call. 
• The solution to this problem is to prioritize VoIP traffic over all other non-critical traffic.  We install and configure a Vyatta network appliance that ensures VoIP traffic will run smoothly.
  

Reliable Internet connection

• VoIP requires that you have a reliable internet connection that does not go down.  Business-class DSL is a good fit for small businesses, but a voice-optimized T1 Internet connection will provide the highest levels of quality and reliability.  We are proud to offer these voice-optimized T1 Internet connections at an unbeatable price.
  
  

Electrical Power 

UPS battery backup power 

• We all know that the electrical power grid is not 100% reliable.  In the course of a year, you can experience multiple brown-outs, and perhaps even some extended black-outs.  In order to keep the VoIP phone system running when the power goes out, we recommend that you connect your network devices and phone PBX to a UPS battery system.
  

Power-over-Ethernet (POE) switches

• Keep in mind that the IP phones also need redundant power.  The expensive solution is to connect a small UPS battery to each phone.  The smarter solution is to implement a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) switch that can supply power and networking to the phones.
  
  

Network Infrastructure 

Network devices

• We recommend at least a 100 mbps switched network to support VoIP.  If you have old hubs or 10 mbps switches, these will need to replaced before we can deploy VoIP on your network.  Fortunately, 100 mbps switches are very reasonable and will not require a large expenditure to install.
  

Network cabling

• In order to run at 100 Mbps speeds and support power-over-ethernet, network cables must be Cat 5 or better.  If you do not know what type of cable you have, we can come on-site and and arrange for cable upgrades if they are necessary.