Johannesburg, 22 May 2009
Voice over IP (VOIP) is one of the most important mission-critical applications being deployed on networks today, and moving to IP telephony is a key decision point in the evolution of a company`s network, says Gary Jameson, Country Manager: South Africa, Eaton Power Quality, a leader in uninterruptible power supply and industrial automation products and services.
"Independent of either the evolutionary or revolutionary approach to migration, trends indicate that companies will convert their entire voice network to be VOIP-based, while demanding equal characteristics of the traditional telephony, such as availability and voice quality," Jameson says.
A new technology, Power over Ethernet, greatly contributes to make these deployments both simple and highly available. This technology allows you to power IP-connected devices such as IP phones and wireless LAN access points, over the existing LAN cabling infrastructure. This allows not only a very convenient and cost-effective powering of the phones (no local desk DC power needed), but also a simple, centralised power protection of the whole installation directly from the switch/wiring closet.
Jameson says VOIP has significant advantages over traditional telephony networks:
* Reduction in carrier circuit charges (true when voice over IP is carried over the Internet)
* Enhanced applications
* Integrated messaging
* Voice-enabled Web sites
* Desktop video conferencing
* Integrated management systems and strategies
* Increased flexibility, reduction in overall complexity, elimination of circuit redundancy
As VOIP matures, it is more commonly called IP (Internet Protocol) telephony or IP communications. And, on the business side, it is converging with a wider suite of office tools that are commonly marketed as unified communications - an umbrella term combining e-mail, instant messaging, SMS and video conferencing.
Availability, Jameson says, is a key issue in IP telephony. "Consider the promise of running telephony over data networks, where you can greatly benefit from new applications, such as unified messaging together with significant cost-savings in personnel and equipment using a single voice-data network."
Before Power over Ethernet, companies couldn`t commit their mission-critical voice systems to run on the data networks - losing data during a power outage is one thing, but losing data and voice during an outage is something else entirely. By supplying power over the same cable as the data network, these systems can now deliver the kind of reliability expected from a business class phone system.
Jameson says everyone has high expectations for voice service availability. A common goal is to consistently achieve 99.999% availability with 5.3 minutes of downtime per year or less. "As a long-term supplier for high availability telephony installations, Eaton Power Quality understands that high availability and reliability are absolute requirements also for IP telephony solutions. By connecting a UPS to a Power over Ethernet Mid-span in the communication room, the entire IP telephony network is becoming more reliable and ensures continuous operation during a power outage."
Together with VOIP, wireless LANs are one of the fastest growing segments in the networks market. Wireless LAN access points are low-power devices that are also connected to the edge closet switches and require low DC power. For such application, Power over Ethernet technology is of great benefit, because it dramatically simplifies the cabling problem (get rid of the low power DC power cable to each access point).
This is why Power over Ethernet is one of the most demanded features for access points products and most suppliers already support this standard, says Jameson. In many cases, wireless LANs are also mission-critical and can benefit from the centralised protection against power losses, provided by a UPS located at the switch closet level.
"The emergence of Power over Ethernet is changing the way we think about powering network components. It is now possible to power, from a central point located at the distribution/edge switch, a number of network devices through the same standard cable that is used for data communication, and that is already installed in most enterprises."
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