Small and medium businesses considering the installation of VoIP to replace standard phone systems must seriously consider the positives and negatives of doing so and ensure that they have a proper IT infrastructure in place for it to work properly, says Randy Peckham, the president and chief technology architect of Ottawa-based IT services firm,
IDS Systems.
Peckham stressed that “in all cases, the network is everything. If the organization’s network is not set up for it, it will be a very negative experience. That typically starts with network switch settings.”
Whenever possible, IDS sets up VoIP on a separate VLAN, a step that is key to ensuring voice quality. “Other data can afford to wait a split second – but not voice,” Peckham said. “When not set up properly, you get ‘jitter’, call drops and echoing. People blame it on the phone system, when the problem is the network.”
IDS has numerous VoIP clients and Peckham also oversaw the installation of VoIP in IDS’s own office. ”We always look into deploying either an on-premise or remotely hosted solution,” Peckham said. “When it’s a hosted service, every single telephony provider will offer a different solution with options that work differently. There is no one system that will work for all situations.”
Peckham noted that most large organizations likely have good quality switches and networks, but that offices with less then 50 users likely have only one network switch. “A managed switch is best,” he explained, “but a basic switch picked up from a superstore will lead to problems. You need to make sure that you have the proper infrastructure to support VoIP and understand the one-time installation costs required to upgrade to VoIP.”
