VoIP & IP AUDIT SERVICE

South West Communications Group provides businesses with As businesses look to make savings in their We undertake network IP audits to determine the
the opportunity to make cost savings with VoIP and to take communications overheads, many may turn towards suitability of existing infrastructures to support
the IP telephony as one way of achieving cost voice calls and to devise the most cost-effective
advantage of the real-time unified communications
effectiveness. A converged voice and data network route to bring about change in a planned and
applications it supports.
infrastructure eliminates the costs of supporting and methodical way. We specialise in the
maintaining separate networks as well as offering development of communication strategies that
significant savings on call costs by virtue of sending help to overcome legacy network issues when
Voice over IP (VoIP). We have has significant expertise upgrading from traditional telephony to modern
in installing voice solutions over existing local area VoIP networks.
network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN)
infrastructures helping organisations to maximize Why an IP audit is important
their investment. It is important to know how the addition of VoIP
would affect a business’s network in terms of the
A converged network can also support the quality of calls and the speed of data transfer. It
deployment of unified communications whereby is better to test for any potential problems
users can access messages of all types (including beforehand rather than making assumptions and
email, voicemail, and faxes) in a single inbox. Such being subject to unpleasant surprises after an
sophisticated software can also provide remote email investment has been made.
access via phone, voice and video conferencing,
document sharing and intelligent rich presence that More bandwidth is often the solution to network
allows staff to instantly see the availability of problems, but just adding more bandwidth does
colleagues. This latest technology can promote an not necessarily solve VoIP problems. It is the
increase in productivity among staff using these real- quality of the connection and not the speed that
time communications tools and can help reduce poses many of the problems with dropped calls,
administrative overheads. poor voice quality, and so forth. In fact, because
of its sensitivity, VoIP can be the first indicator of
However, before any business considers taking network problems, which have hitherto been
advantage of these communications benefits, it needs transparent.
to have a clear understanding of the impact it will
have and ascertain its network’s integrity and its
capability to support voice.
What an IP audit involves Packet loss – is the complete loss of traffic and it can be Bandwidth considerations may also lead to separating the
Our IP audit service conducts pre-deployment baseline caused by several factors; the most common being voice and data networks. If a company’s existing network
assessments to simulate voice traffic on the network. This network congestion. This is usually caused by insufficient does not have the bandwidth to support VoIP, installing a
service is designed to help determine whether deficiencies bandwidth or poor network design. separate network for VoIP is a solution. Where networks
exist that businesses need to address before deploying are converged, South West Communications Group
VoIP. The assessment may show that a network is ready The resulting data is then analysed and a formal report recommends the deployment of VLANs to separate VoIP
for VoIP or that a few key components need to be submitted with details of the findings regarding the and data as best practice for securing VoIP networks.
changed. In some cases, companies find that they may strength and resilience of the network and its suitability to
need to completely redesign their network to support VoIP take telephony traffic across it. Some businesses may also be more suited to separate
and may require new routers, switches or a change in networks due to industry or government mandates that
protocol. This report also makes recommendations as to the actions determine how secure data has to be on a business’s
required if necessary to upgrade the network network.
A test session period for an IP audit is selected to ensure infrastructure. At this point, our professional consultants
that our team of specialist engineers captures a realistic are poised to design a more resilient solution that
period of time that encompasses normal or busy network addresses all of issues the audit has highlighted.
usage. In order to gather the information required for a
network audit, test calls are made using the existing The alternative
network from strategic points within the LAN or WAN. If the audit reveals the existing network cannot support
VoIP, an alternative is to deploy a separate network
The traffic is then modified to simulate the varying loads dedicated to VoIP components. This can be achieved with
and operational criteria found within a shared network. an entirely separate physical network or via using “virtual”
This simulation measures the voice quality under these local area network (VLAN) technology to separate the voice
conditions. The key criteria measured that most effect the and data networks.
operation of the network are delay, jitter and packet loss:
Another reason for separating networks is security. VoIP is
Delay – is experienced if the network becomes congested. vulnerable to the same attacks, intrusions, and security
This can be caused by the existing network design or threats as data networks and if businesses have VoIP and
insufficient available bandwidth. data traffic combined on the same network, an attack on
one can bring down the other. It is highly inconvenient
Jitter – is also caused by congestion, and is defined by when email is inaccessible when a network is down but if
variations between the arrival times of the voice packets both email and telephone communications are
arriving at their destination, thus giving the appearance of unavailable, businesses typically suffer huge interruption
the voice being broken up. and potentially lost money.