AT&T is one of the first customers to test the solution, with the company’s network engineering and performance analysis lab using the VoFi Analyzer to monitor voice-over-IP (VoIP) traffic on the wireless network, and to validate the performance and security aspects of its customer designs.
Providing voice capability on the wireless network can offer significant benefits for enterprises, in terms of combining the cost-effectiveness of VoIP services with the flexibility and convenience of WiFi. The expectation is that using the wireless network for voice will become a more widely deployed technology over the next few years, as prices fall and the concept matures. WiFi will become a common feature on cellular mobile phones, and be as ubiquitous as the technology has become in today’s laptops.
With continuing developments in terms of enterprise and public WiFi, dual-mode mobile devices could gain significant traction very quickly. The expectation is that a significant proportion of enterprises will eventually provide dual-mode handsets to all users. The fact that dual-mode solutions offer the ability for employees to be contactable on a single number, at any time, will prove to be an important factor in the longer term, driving uptake by a broad range of employees.
This increasing interest in using the wireless network for voice calls brings into focus the need to have more visibility of what’s happening in this environment, especially with regard to call performance. Voice applications are highly susceptible to network problems, with poor voice quality caused by any number of issues from different sources, such as the phone, the RF environment, the WiFi infrastructure, QoS settings, or the IP-PBX. This complexity makes voice problems particularly challenging, and time-consuming to diagnose.
The AirMagnet VoFi Analyzer provides analysis that is focused on these unique challenges. It tracks the quality of all calls on encrypted wireless networks, and automatically identifies the source of problems, enabling enterprises to have confidence when implementing and administering voice capability over a WiFi infrastructure. The solution displays information in terms of calls and call quality, differentiating between voice and data traffic, and automatically scoring every call using R-Value and Mean Opinion Score (MOS). This provides a full history of all calls on the wireless network, quickly exposing problems that are being caused by a particular device, channel, or period in time.
Extending VoIP into the wireless environment must not be a step in the dark. Organizations must ensure that analytical tools are deployed to ensure the visibility of voice calls on the wireless network.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
