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From Network Computing Vol 18 No 05- September/October 2009

… GOING BEYOND TECHNOLOGY AND PRODUCT. THE NETWORK PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MASTERCLASS SERIES IN ASSOCIATION WITH NETSCOUT SYSTEMS LOOKS AT HOW TO MANAGE THE DELIVERY OF CONVERGED IPSERVICES.

Opportunity: Cost effective voice and data services delivered across a single converged IP Network. Challenge: Establishing unified visibility to allow adequate network and application performance management to take place. Any series of challenges and opportunities in a modern IP network would not be complete without considering Voice over IP (VoIP) services. By now, a majority of organisations of all types and size have completed migration of their traditional analogue telephone service to VoIP, offering a convenient communications method to increase revenue, collect payments, or justcommunicate.

Performance expectations for voice are always high, due to the importance it has to the business and the expectations set by previous analogue services. It is no surprise then that a common goal of IT organisations is to deliver high quality converged voice, video and data services,across their complex IP network.

THE CHALLENGE IS TO DELIVER HIGH QUALITY VOICE AND DATASERVICES SIMULTANEOUSLY

End user expectations of superior voice call quality are anchored in their experience with the 20th centuries Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) and its reliability; it remains necessary for callers to receive the same, if not better, quality from VoIP telephone services. However, delivery of high quality voice cannot come at the expense of the data services already operating in the enterprise. The challenge then is managing the delivery and performance of both IPbased voice and data services simultaneously, and without thedegradation of either.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR UNIFIED SERVICE DELIVERY MANAGEMENTOF BOTH VOICE AND DATA

Unified service delivery assurance solutions analyse converged applications to assure the high availability and performance of complex IP services. Achieved by delivering a common set of metrics, analysis, views and reports for voice, video and data, IT organisations can then use this information to promote operational consistency and collaboration. It may also reduce service delivery complexity, and save time and training costs when compared to individual,technology-specific point tools.

When sourcing a unified solution for managing service delivery of voice and data, best practice approaches will include leveraging the actual packet-flow data traversing the network, to provide the deep visibility and action-oriented data needed to: • Effectively manage network andapplication performance

• Optimise the existing infrastructure andproperly plan for capacity

• Validate configurations and delivery of new VoIP services and existing businessdata services

• Leverage back-in-time analysis for in depth accelerated troubleshooting ofdisruptions in the delivery of all services.

• Predict and pre-empt potential congestion, degradations and anomalies that would otherwise result in servicedelivery issues.

Organisations deploying a converged voice and data service delivery management solution will realiseimmediate benefits, including the following:

• Simplified VoIP management by replacing tools that manage only individual service types with a unified management solution, providing early warning and fast resolutionof all performance issues

• Assured Quality of Experience by providing end-to-end visibility into voice, video and data services with meaningful, correlated user experience metrics, such as jitter, latency and packet loss, to ensuredependable service delivery

• Optimise infrastructure and planning with real-time and historical technology focused analysis. Also trending of VoIP service usage, to avoid trunk congestion and ensure that high-bandwidth applications donot impact latency sensitive services

• Validate operations by verifying supporting infrastructure and compliance to VoIP quality standards by tracking jitter,latency, QoS classification policy

• Improve IT collaboration with a single source of information and process for evaluating unified communications services delivery that empowers teamwork betweentelephony and data networking teams

A unified service delivery management solution to optimise performance of converged voice and data services is business critical. It will help prepare for whatever comes next, be it video, telepresence or something else. NC

In the next issue of Network Computing, NetScout will continue this Masterclass series with its in depth look at Service Delivery Management. Network Computing and NetScout invite reader comments and questions relating to items discussed in this series. Mail: Ray.Smyth@BTC.co.uk

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