An important element related to the use of Internet telephony is the network infrastructure to which VoIP devices will be connected. The way in which it is built, distributed and made available, both its physical and logical part, determines the correct, convenient and appropriate operation of solutions based on VoIP telephony. ICT infrastructure connects the access point to the Internet with the end user. It can only be an IT network if the end devices are VoIP telephones, but it can also be an IT network and a telephone network if the end device is an ordinary telephone connected to a VoIP gateway.
If you have already made a selection of VoIP devices, you need to check whether your ICT infrastructure is adapted to connect the correct VoIP devices you want to use. Below are presented the main issues related to the issue of network infrastructure in the location where the VoIP telephony will operate, which should be noted.
Network sockets – in order to use VoIP telephony with such devices as IPPBX PBXs, VoIP gateways or VoIP phones, physical network sockets of RJ-45 type must be available, to which these devices will be connected. So make sure that there are free local network sockets in the places where these devices will be located. If the installation is small, it may be enough to connect VoIP devices directly to the router or switch of the appropriate length with Ethernet cables, in larger projects and installations, usually VoIP devices are connected to the cable infrastructure distributed throughout the premises of the location. During the verification process, it may turn out that there are too few outlets. In such a situation, it is possible to use small, multi-port switches to increase the availability of network outlets by branching the network. If the sockets are not located in the places where we would like them to be, most often the appropriate length of network cables should be used.
Telephone sockets – in the case of VoIP gateways, we also use traditional telephones. Such telephones can be connected directly to VoIP gateways with short telephone cables with RJ-11 plug, but if the distance from the VoIP gateway to the end user is large or the VoIP gateway is in a different room than the user (especially when using multi-port VoIP gates), the best solution is to use the local telephone infrastructure. Such infrastructure will provide us with the ability to connect end users with a remote VoIP gateway. If we do not have such infrastructure, a countermeasure is to use wireless phones, whose databases we connect directly to VoIP gateways, and headphones within the range of databases can be used by end users.
Internet access point – using solutions based on VoIP telephony is connected with access to the Internet. Therefore, an important element is the location of the modem or router or other device to which the Internet service provider provides its access link. VoIP devices must be connected to it directly or indirectly via a local area network. It may happen that, for some reason, the place to which the Internet connection is provided is located somewhere else than, for example, our local network converges, and in this situation, the infrastructure must be adapted in such a way as to connect the two places to each other.
Perhaps the location where the VoIP solutions will be implemented, for example, has two links to the Internet, so it must be decided which of these links will be used to handle telephone calls as part of the solution being implemented and which links offer the parameters to ensure the correct use of VoIP-based solutions. Using a separate link only for Internet telephony will physically separate data transmission in this respect from other data transmission, which will significantly improve the quality of Internet telephony services.
Local network – in addition to the physical location of sockets in rooms, an important element may be the logic of network connections, because in a given location may be, for example, available different local networks/subnets, operated by different routers or switches with different IP addresses, perhaps separated from each other physically or software, and thus mutually separated from each other. Such infrastructure may prove to be an obstacle to the proper use of VoIP solutions for some users of the organization.
Firewall and other security measures – Internet telephony is a solution using packet transmission. Packets are sent to the Internet and received from it, as it happens when browsing the Internet.
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