Efficient and Cost-effective Telephony
Whether the motivation is cost reduction or simplicity, IP Telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP) promises to make an impact. Rather than paying for bandwidth that is inefficiently used, such as consuming bi-directional bandwidth when one person speaks at a time, VoIP has the intelligence to only use the bandwidth needed, and is even able to compress that usage on its own. This results in significantly less bandwidth being used, which is more cost effective data, compared to the more expensive voice or PSTN links. Further, much of the telephony innovation is focused on IP Telephony, with the standard PBX quickly being replaced by the IP-PBX, offering much more functionality and flexibility.
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Voice Traffic is not Resilient or Forgiving
While IP Telephony traffic is more efficient than traditional voice traffic, the inefficient switched nature of the traditional system did guarantee bandwidth throughout the duration of the call. A network that allows for temporary bursting at the expense of adding minimal latency is the right network for most applications, but voice does not burst, and it is definitely not amiable to delay. In fact, delay of voice traffic has its own name - jitter. Jitter occurs when the bursty and congestive nature of the IP network cause packet spacing to increase from its original interval. This irregular spacing - jitter - will severely degrade the quality of voice calls. Not only is it unable to cope with delay, not using TCP (VoIP uses UDP) means there is no method of dealing with lost packets, or packets received out of order. So, while there are many benefits and cost savings associated with IP Telephony, when voice traffic must compete for bandwidth with other applications on the network, the quality of calls will suffer even if the IP network is working perfectly.
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Expand's Voice and Data Convergence SolutionExpand's IP Telephony solution helps transform the WAN into a voice friendly environment, enabling you to reach the full potential of IP Telephony initiatives.
WAN OptimizationExpand's WAN Optimization solution will transform your IP network into a voice-friendly WAN. Expand's QoS and shaping will ensure that the voice traffic will have the uncongested bandwidth it needs, when it needs it. This is critical for IP Telephony call quality. However, while ensuring uncongested bandwidth is available to voice is critical for superior call quality, other applications must also perform well to keep the business running. Fortunately, Expand's WAN compression will dramatically increase the available bandwidth for these applications, ensuring they perform optimally in a voice-friendly WAN.
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AccelerationEven with WAN Optimization, there will be times where the WAN is in the middle of processing a large packet and cannot service the request for bandwidth until it completes the transmission of the large packet. Expand's unique voice optimization works specifically in these congested periods, predicting when large packets will disrupt call quality. To prevent this, Expand temporarily fragments these large packets, allowing the voice packet to be transmitted on the WAN at precisely the right moment. While this intelligence will noticeably maintain voice quality during congested periods, the large packet fragmentation will not noticeably impact the performance of the other applications.
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