Much of the hype has been around residential VoIP, rather than business VoIP communications. It is crucial to understand that major differences exist between residential and business grade VoIP solutions. Relying on a residential grade VoIP service can have disastrous effects for a business, including loss of sound quality in phone calls and down time where your business’ ability to communicate may be cut off entirely. The integration of a business grade VoIP solution has many cost and efficiency benefits for Australian Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs).

The most obvious advantages of a business-grade VoIP solution are the reductions in call and line rental costs, however, there are many other significant business advantages for SMBs of all sizes to realise:

* Increased productivity by integrating VoIP with the computer desktop and allowing features such as Click2Dial from Outlook

* Increased business metric capabilities from detailed reporting on inbound and outbound call patterns

* Vastly improved and centralised personal attendant and reception capabilities allowing visibility of all staff extensions in a consolidated view, simplifying transfers to extensions and voicemail

* Awareness of an individual’s location as ‘available’, ‘busy’ or ‘out of the office until 2pm’

* Increased efficiency from converging the voice and data networks (operating both voice and data on the one network)

To decide how best to integrate VoIP with your existing voice and data infrastructure you must have a clear understanding of your business drivers and the results you wish to achieve.

VoIP Gateways

Ideal times to consider the introduction of a VoIP solution are during an office relocation, or during times of high growth. An excellent entry level solution for businesses who wish to experience the benefits provided by VoIP is to connect their phone system to PSTN via a VoIP gateway device. A VoIP gateway device is a simple piece of hardware that allows the basic integration of VoIP with a traditional phone system, most often without having to physically change any configuration.

Pacific Internet’s VoIP gateway is connected via a business-grade broadband service and will send calls destined for external locations (whether local, national, mobiles, international or another VoIP service) across the VoIP network and into the traditional phone line at the destination point. It is Pacific Internet that maintains connectivity to the traditional phone line. This scenario allows for the seamless integration between the two networks (PSTN and VoIP) and a traditional phone system to co-exist with a VoIP solution. The advantage of a gradual migration to a total VoIP solution is that it allows you to immediately appreciate some of the benefits of VoIP, without the upfront cost of replacing your entire existing voice infrastructure.

Connecting to Traditional Voice Networks via VoIP

A number of scenarios are available to connect your phone system to the traditional PSTN via VoIP, the most common of which are:

* Full replacement of traditional analogue or digital lines for all inbound and outbound calls, providing for standard geographic Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers to be allocated to the VoIP service, for example, 02 9999 9999 for Sydney, 07 3333 3333 for Brisbane, 02 4900 0000 for Newcastle

* Partial replacement of traditional analogue or digital lines for all outbound calls

* Installation of additional VoIP lines to sustain call overflow during unexpected or regular peaks in outbound calls traffic

* Additional lines for calling only specific, designated prefixes. For example, making all outbound calls to mobiles via VoIP.

Each of these scenarios can be configured to either work automatically or to require manual user selection with most phone systems. For example, if VoIP is being installed solely to make all outbound calls to mobiles then the phone system can be set-up via Least Cost Routing (LCR) to automatically use a VoIP line when an individual calls a mobile.

An important consideration when integrating your traditional telephone system with VoIP is to very clearly understand current calling behaviour. For consideration are items such as:

* How many simultaneous inbound calls does the business receive?

* How many simultaneous outbound calls does the business make?

* How many spare PSTN ports (or trunk ports) does the telephone system have?

* Are the spare PSTN ports for analogue lines or for digital (ISDN) lines?

* If there are currently insufficient spare PSTN ports, can the phone system be cost-effectively upgraded with additional cards to provide sufficient port capacity?

Once you have a clear understanding of your current call behaviour and phone system, you can accurately determine how many VoIP lines are required and the resulting demands this will place on business-grade broadband service. You must consider bandwidth requirements, segregation of voice from data, and Quality of Service (QoS).

As your VoIP provider, Pacific Internet, can make qualified recommendations on the best configuration to achieve your desired business benefits. Integrating VoIP with an existing business data network and phone system takes a significant amount of careful planning and it is crucial that this step not be overlooked, however, it is an ideal way to test a VoIP solution and immediately start to appreciate some of the cost and efficiency benefits that VoIP can provide.

By S. Maurer

On this digital Century the business and Data Technology administrations is radically moving to the Next-Generation of Business Administration. For that reason, this series of articles will exhibit essential tips from us and also we included very fews from public sources about this specific affair or this advanced method of doing business. In spite of the event that very fews tips are public domains, if asked for that the source will be always mentioned.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Integration into global telëphone number system: While the traditional Plain Ancient Teletelephone System [POTS] and mobile phone networks share a common global average [E.164] which allocates and identifies any specific telephone line, there is no widely adopted alike customary for [VOIP] networks. Some allocate an E.164 number which can be applyd for [VOIP] as well as incoming/external calls. However, there are often different, incompatible schemes when calling between [VOIP] providers which use provider specific short codes.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: A call to the U.S. emërgency services number 911 may not automatically be routed to the nearest community emergency dispatch center, and would be of no employ for subscribers outside the U.S.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: VoIP to [VOIP] telephone calls on any provider arë typically free, whilst [VOIP] to PSTN calls generally costs the [VOIP] user. Free [VOIP] to PSTN services are rare. A notable provider is [VOIP] User.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: If a subscriber with a residence phonë number in a U.S. area code calls someone else in his residence area code, [IT] will be treated as a community call regardless of where that person is in the world.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Signaling protocols: Session Initiation Protocol [SIP] definëd by the IETF, newer than H.323 H.323 defined by the ITU-T Megaco [a.k.a. H.248] and MGCP both media gateway control protocols Skinny Client Control Protocol proprietary protocol from Cisco MiNET proprietary protocol from Mitel CorNet-IP proprietary protocol from Siemens IAX the Inter-Asterisk eXchange protocol used by the Asterisk open source PBX server and associated client software Skype a proprietary peer-to-peer protocol used in the Skype application Jajah a proprietary peer-to-peer protocol used in the Jajah SIP and IAX compatible webphone Jingle open peer-to-peer protocol based on XMPP [Jabber] and being harmonised with the ‘substantially equivalent’ Google Talk protocol. Several different speech codecs can be used for stream audio compression. Commonly used codecs for [VOIP] traffic contain G.711, G.723.1 and G.729, all ITU-T-specified.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Many of the largest carriërs employ H.323 in their core backbones, and the vast majority of callers have small or no belief that their POTS calls are being terminated over VoIP. So really SIP is a useful tool for the “district loop” and H.323 is like the “fiber backbone”.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Incoming telephone calls can be automatically routëd to your [VOIP] phone, regardless of where you are connected to the network. Take your [VOIP] phone with you on a trip, and anywhere you connect to the Internet, you can receive incoming calls.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: As the popularity of [VOIP] grows, and PSTN users switch to [VOIP] in incrëasing numbers, governments are becoming more interested in regulating [VOIP] in a manner corresponding to legacy PSTN services.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Some cost savings are duë to using a single network to carry voice and data, especially where applyrs have existing under-utilized network capacity they can use for [VOIP] at no additional cost. Some Internet connections are asymmetrical, i.e. the upstream data rate is significantly lower than the downstream data rate. This places a final absolute throttle to the transmitted data rate and thus voice quality.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Users of Instant Messënger based [VOIP] services like Skype, Gizmo Project or Yahoo! Messenger can also travel anywhere in the globe and create and receive call calls. Drawbacks [VOIP] technology still has a infrequent shortcomings that have led some to believe that [IT] is not ready for widespread deployment. However, many manufacturer analysts predicted that 2005 was the “Year of Inflection,” where more IP PBX ports shipped than legacy digital PBX ports.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: “Dual mode” handsets, which allow for thë seamless handover between a cellular network and a WiFi network, are expected to aid [VOIP] become more popular.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Mass-market telëphony: A major development starting in 2004 has been the introduction of mass-market [VOIP] services over broadband Internet access services, in which subscribers constitute and receive calls as they would over the PSTN. This requires either a software client for the machine or an analog telephone adapter [ATA] for connecting a telephone to the broadband Internet connection.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Very low cost [or freë in many cases]: [VOIP] is causing deep changes in any enterprise’s communications in the whole world

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Corporate and telco usë: Although infrequent office environments and much fewer homes employ a pure [VOIP] infrastructure, telecommunications providers routinely employ IP telephony, often over a dedicated IP network, to connect switching stations, converting voice signals to IP packets and back. The result is a data-abstracted digital network which the provider can easily upgrade and employ for multiple purposes.

What is [VOIP] Telephony System Management?: Single location of calling: With commercial sërvices such as Vonage, [IT] is potential to connect the [VOIP] router into the existing central telephone box in the hoemploy and have [VOIP] at every phone already connected. Other services, such as Skype & PeerMe, typically require the use of a computer, so they are limited to single location of calling, though handsets are immediately available, allowing them to be used without a PC.