Designing a Voice over Ip Telephony Solution

Designing A Voice Over IP Telephony Solution

November 13, 2003

Abstract

When, on March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell uttered the words into a speaker "Watson, come here; I want you." (Encarta October 2003) to his assistant Thomas Watson, he gave birth to the modern communications revolution, since that time the telephone has become an integral part of modern society. With the advent of the modern computer and computer networks humankind was availed the ability to communicate with both words and data. It is a natural progression of technology that these two modes of communication be joined into one single network thus affording a blending of technologies that will enhance our communication abilities.

The proposed project detailed in this paper has been prepared with the intention of building a fully converged single network to support; data, voice, and video across all of a medium, sized businesses branch locations. To accomplish this I have researched a Cisco AVVID solution to be deployed at the main facility of a midsized company. This document is intended for those technical staff members who will be installing and supporting this network.

The headquarters convergence project will build the base infrastructure and provide the initial deployment of an enterprise wide IP telephony system. This work entails the main location only unless specifically referencing other sites for various reasons

Table of Contents

Abstract 3

Introduction 4

Project Background 4

Project Objective 4

Project Overview and Scope 4

Physical Layer Design 5

Design Requirements and Best Practices 5

Local Area Network (LAN) Quality of Service (QoS) 6

Wide Area Network (WAN) Quality of Service (QoS) 6

Configuration of the Voice Call Processing Server 7

Dial Plan 8

Configuration of the Voice Gateway Hardware and Protocols 9

Transcoding, Conferencing, and MTP Resources 10

Site Survey 10

Pre-installation Site Survey 10

Definition of Completeness 10

Staging Services 11

On-site Installation Requirements 11

Training 13

Documentation 13

Definition of Completeness 13

Project Management 14

Overview 14

Project Control 14

Project Timeline 14

Conclusion 15

Appendix A: Proposal for a Voice Over IP Telephony Solution 16

Appendix B: Progress Report 18

References 20

Final Paper: Designing A Voice Over IP Telephony Solution

Introduction

When, on March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell uttered the words into a speaker "Watson, come here; I want you." (Encarta October 2003) to his assistant Thomas Watson, he gave birth to the modern communications revolution. Since that time the telephone has become an integral part of modern society. With the advent of the modern computer and computer networks humankind was availed the ability to communicate with both words and data. It is a natural progression of technology that these to modes of communication be joined into one single network thus affording a blending of technologies that will enhance our communication abilities.

Project Background

The proposed project detailed in this document has been prepared as a precursor to, and first step in, a process that will ultimately result in the installation of a voice over IP solution in a midsized company. To prepare for the convergence of voice, video and data it is necessary to invest in technology to build an Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data or AVVID. The main focus of this paper will be the specification and design of that architecture. Network convergence, in any form, needs to deliver reliability, superior performance, be technically advanced; yet easy to use, cost effective and create an infrastructure that allows a network to be prepared for the quick and seamless integration of future applications and solutions. The solution described in this paper, once completed, will provide the necessary foundation for a converged network by successfully installing the necessary data networking components, call processing equipment, and associated IP endpoints.

Project Objective

The solution proposed is for a midsized company and utilizes key data infrastructure pieces such as redundant Catalyst 3550-12G fiber aggregated switches and Catalyst 3524PWR access layer switches to create foundational components in the AVVID architecture. The voice solution consists of the Cisco Call Manager call processing application which makes call routing decisions and processes telephony features in the new converged network. The voice main system is the Cisco Unity Unified Messaging system that creates a single point of network access, weather that access is a telephone or a pc, to retrieve both voice mail and email messages and, with an optional fax server, fax messages as well.

Project overview and scope

It will be necessary to acquire and configure certain hardware and software for this project. The hardware specified in this document is based on research into the Cisco AVVID best practices. This research was then compared to equipment that is currently installed at the mid sized company that this project is proposed for, to come up with the list below.

Physical