For many years, the idea of a converged network — able to carry both voice and data traffic — has been promoted by the industry as a great way to swiftly achieve all of these goals, in one move.

But technology decision-makers in both the private and public sectors have remained famously unconvinced about the benefits of Voice over IP. Why? Because while the technology looked great on paper, in reality it had significant teething problems.

Take Quality of Service. The packetised nature of VoIP meant that voice data was prone to break up in transmission, which was simply unacceptable given the excellent quality of existing analog QoS. Could these problems be ironed out?

Security was another critical concern. Could VoIP networks both be successfully protected from hackers and malicious code and deliver guaranteed uptime?
IT buyers wanted to be to be 100% sure before signing on the dotted line.

Long-term investment protection was the third bar to entry for many enterprises, both large and small. Would the technology be open, future-proof and deliver a fast and proven ROI?

3Com is pleased to say that the answer to all of these questions is a confident ‘Yes!’

High quality VoIP transmission is now a reality

There’s one simple approach to ensuring impeccable voice quality. It requires the creation of a dedicated Voice LAN (VLAN) within the converged network, which automatically recognises when an attached phone is transmitting.

Voice traffic is then prioritised over other types of application traffic on the network, so the packets arrive unimpeded at the destination. Problem solved.

How do you know if your network is ready for voice?

If we take the above elements into consideration, there are, essentially, four things your network should be capable of doing to be ready to support VoIP. It needs to automatically recognise when a phone is attached to the network; it needs to place that phone into the voice VLAN with high priority; during a voice call it needs to assign high priority to the voice data stream to ensure consistent voice quality; and finally, it must protect the voice traffic from vulnerabilities.

These are the fundamental characteristics of Voice Ready Networks from 3Com.

Inherent, end-to-end voice security is here too

Most network security solutions are built on an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) which isolates suspect devices and disables malicious code only once it has entered the system. Industry-leading Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are now able to quarantine threats within seconds, before they even enter your voice or data network, ensuring 24/7 security. And not only are both your voice and data networks protected but, using state-of-the art wireless networking solutions, your mobile communications can be too.

No more forklift — a new, simple migration route

If all that sounds expensive and disruptive, it doesn’t have to be. You can now enjoy all this quality and security assurance alongside the benefits of a future-proof open-standards technology platform. That means you can build a cost-effective multi-vendor environment piece by piece and quickly roll out over your existing networking kit, without ripping out what’s already there and ‘fork-lifting’ in a whole set of new products.

Maintenance is simple too. Centralised management tools mean you can monitor and measure the entire converged network from a single console.

3Com now offers you VoIP migration in a high quality, open-standards based package we call a Voice-Ready Network – all protected by our industry-defining IPS security solution, TippingPoint™. If you’d like to know how it can drive cost and productivity benefits in your organisation, call us on +800 3266 3266 to talk to the 3Com experts.