Cloud computing and VoIP applications like the ServicePattern solution require fully functional networks that continually run at high levels of performance. Without insight and visibility into the end-to-end network paths that affect service quality, how can we effectively manage network performance?
When deploying any VoIP solution, you need to understand if your data network is ready to carry high-quality voice transmissions. Remember that most data networks were originally designed to support email, file transfers, and web browsing, and not for high-quality voice transmissions. Voice traffic is much more time-sensitive. And it can’t be queued like email and web traffic. Transmission delays of a few hundred milliseconds are not a major issue for email or file transfer, but can drastically impact a VoIP conversation, reducing quality and/or dropping calls.
Network assessments can uncover these potential issues prior to introducing a VoIP solution. A typical assessment simulates VoIP traffic across a network to gather fundamental metrics, such as:
- Mean Opinion Score (MOS): What type of VoIP voice quality can I expect in my environment?
- Network Traffic: What is the measured network delay, packet loss, or jitter across the network?
- Bandwidth: How many concurrent VoIP calls can the network carry without affecting existing data services or voice quality?
Knowing this information before deploying any cloud-based VoIP solution will better ensure the success of your solution. You can easily perform a basic network assessment through a BrightPattern data center right from your desktop – give it a try
(Note: Because of Java issues, I just had problems running it under a few browsers, but was successful with IE.)
Here's the result I got working at home with my standard Comcast package (click the image to make it bigger):
