Absolutely! The Technology is awesome. The horror stories come from the companies that deploy it.
VoIP is an IP service that is delivered over IP. This means that the company that provides this service to you must be able to deliver IP at the quality level that you would expect to receive voice serves at. Well, if you are thinking any old traditional phone company can do this you are very mistaken. Most phone companies don’t have a clue how to deliver high quality IP services. I have worked with a few companies that started out as ISP’s who have deployed the service successfully.
There are a few obvious deployment errors. Anybody who will sell you VoIP services without you buying a link into their network doesn’t know what they are doing.
Ex. If you buy Internet access from one provider and VoIP service from another, you will have your own horror story. Everybody assumes the Voice Over IP means “Voice over Internet” Voice Over Internet doesn’t work. There is not quality control.
The other major problem out there is the big names in Telecom don’t have the intellectual property to do it and especially don’t have the networks or policies to execute it. They will sell you the services but you will experience the same issues and more than you did when you had traditional phone service with them. They built out their IP Networks for low cost, NOT high performance. They never intended or wanted to put voice on their IP networks. This is why they are struggling today to provide VoIP quality products. Some small providers wholesale these services and utilize these same networks.
Many IP providers are aggregating heavily into Frame Relay networks. You will see the same performance on their T1 networks that you see with their DSL services. What you want to look for is a provider that will drop your T1 circuits into the POP that delivers you to the Internet and links you to the VoIP switch. This is the best scenario, But hard to find.
If you are considering VoIP you should only talk with providers than can give you both Internet and VoIP products. Ask them how they will guarantee the quality. Then consider whom you are doing business with. If you ask them for VoIP and they don’t know what you are talking about you should move on. Small companies are the best positioned to provide these services at high levels of quality. The problem you will see here is that most of the small companies are startups that are operated by Traditional minded personnel.
Traditional Telecom mentality is what has un-necessarily dragged the VoIP products from taking off. VoIP has been the clear choice for at least a decade. Dealing with sub pare IP Networks and providers lead by the Telco Industry has really been a struggle.
You can take the telco worker out of the telco but you cannot take the telco out of the worker. Well, not unless you have a little more than a decade to do it;)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Is five-nine (99.999%) reliability a reality in today’s Telecom?
I have spent many years working directly within many of the big name Telecommunications Providers and I think there are many factors that contribute to a service declining trend.
First I think that 99.999% is hard to do even in traditional TDM deployments. It requires a lot of discipline and planning in operations to do this, and let’s face it many cLEC’s don’t have it.
Many providers are deploying VOIP services over old IP networks that were not designed to give 99.999% availability. IP was always a secondary non-critical service by many consumers and was not considered a critical service by Telephone companies. The IP networks need to be able to provide 99.999% availability before any service riding on it will be able to.
Consumers should also know that VOIP does not bring about lower prices. It facilitates some additional features, functionality and design benefits. You get more but you don’t necessarily pay less. In some instances it does save money. But I have seen many in which it costs more.
Many large VOIP providers are providing VOIP services over the public Internet. This just doesn’t work for large deployments. Many of their customers are deploying low budget communications systems for their business. On top of the fact that the traffic transverses the Internet they are usually running this over a DSL circuit which cannot provide consistent IP quality to the Internet. So a low budget deployment such as this is where you get the horror stories. These are really horror customers. The best deployment here is a couple of LAN lines and their DSL.
If you want to benefit from VOIP and experience high availability you need to step up to a TDM link to the same provider who is also hosting your VOIP service. Yes this costs a little more but that is why it works. You may also be surprised to see that this costs less than your DSL and traditional analog lines that you currently have.
First I think that 99.999% is hard to do even in traditional TDM deployments. It requires a lot of discipline and planning in operations to do this, and let’s face it many cLEC’s don’t have it.
Many providers are deploying VOIP services over old IP networks that were not designed to give 99.999% availability. IP was always a secondary non-critical service by many consumers and was not considered a critical service by Telephone companies. The IP networks need to be able to provide 99.999% availability before any service riding on it will be able to.
Consumers should also know that VOIP does not bring about lower prices. It facilitates some additional features, functionality and design benefits. You get more but you don’t necessarily pay less. In some instances it does save money. But I have seen many in which it costs more.
Many large VOIP providers are providing VOIP services over the public Internet. This just doesn’t work for large deployments. Many of their customers are deploying low budget communications systems for their business. On top of the fact that the traffic transverses the Internet they are usually running this over a DSL circuit which cannot provide consistent IP quality to the Internet. So a low budget deployment such as this is where you get the horror stories. These are really horror customers. The best deployment here is a couple of LAN lines and their DSL.
If you want to benefit from VOIP and experience high availability you need to step up to a TDM link to the same provider who is also hosting your VOIP service. Yes this costs a little more but that is why it works. You may also be surprised to see that this costs less than your DSL and traditional analog lines that you currently have.
Are all Internet T1 Lines the same?
No, not to the end user. Technically the T1 line is the connection between the Local Central Office and the Customer location and should all be the same. When you add services to the T1 line such as Internet Access then they differ greatly by providers.
T1 lines can provide a reliable connection between the customer building and the local central office, but that is all the T1 line does. From the local central office, the T1 is carried on a DS1 path to somewhere in the providers network.
Telecommunications providers have traditionally treated their IP networks as a secondary non-critical service. When they invested into their IP infrastructure they looked to save money and keep costs low. The problem they are now struggling with is that their IP networks perform poorly and the services that their customers are demanding will not work. By aggregating traffic into frame relay clouds they introduce latency fluctuations. It is very difficult to utilize these infrastructures to provide quality service for services such as Voice or MPLS services. An Internet T1 line on these networks is essentially “Reliable DSL Service”, high cost connection with cheap low quality bandwidth.
A high quality Internet T1 line will not have latency fluctuations. Since all T1 lines theoretically run at the same speed the bandwidth is not the issue. All T1 lines will give you 1.5Mb/s. In fact you can get more bandwidth out of a DSL line than on an Internet T1. But because DSL is unreliable and low cost they will not provide you quality bandwidth.
There are very few Telecommunications Providers that will give you a good quality Internet connection that will not experience large latency fluctuations. Their network designs are the key to performance and will usually cost a little more than your low cost Internet T1 providers. You will notice that when you add additional services such as voice or MPLS the costs for these services is less. It is easier to provide these services on a network that performs well.
Unfortunately the big names in the industry are the high priced service provider and are the biggest quality offenders. I would say you get what you pay for but that doesn’t seem to apply here. You just have to understand how the providers operate in order make an educated decision.
Carlos Barron
T1 lines can provide a reliable connection between the customer building and the local central office, but that is all the T1 line does. From the local central office, the T1 is carried on a DS1 path to somewhere in the providers network.
Telecommunications providers have traditionally treated their IP networks as a secondary non-critical service. When they invested into their IP infrastructure they looked to save money and keep costs low. The problem they are now struggling with is that their IP networks perform poorly and the services that their customers are demanding will not work. By aggregating traffic into frame relay clouds they introduce latency fluctuations. It is very difficult to utilize these infrastructures to provide quality service for services such as Voice or MPLS services. An Internet T1 line on these networks is essentially “Reliable DSL Service”, high cost connection with cheap low quality bandwidth.
A high quality Internet T1 line will not have latency fluctuations. Since all T1 lines theoretically run at the same speed the bandwidth is not the issue. All T1 lines will give you 1.5Mb/s. In fact you can get more bandwidth out of a DSL line than on an Internet T1. But because DSL is unreliable and low cost they will not provide you quality bandwidth.
There are very few Telecommunications Providers that will give you a good quality Internet connection that will not experience large latency fluctuations. Their network designs are the key to performance and will usually cost a little more than your low cost Internet T1 providers. You will notice that when you add additional services such as voice or MPLS the costs for these services is less. It is easier to provide these services on a network that performs well.
Unfortunately the big names in the industry are the high priced service provider and are the biggest quality offenders. I would say you get what you pay for but that doesn’t seem to apply here. You just have to understand how the providers operate in order make an educated decision.
Carlos Barron
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