Tips and Tricks – Quality of Service

Voice and video traffic is time-sensitive.  Packets encapsulating voice and video traffic must traverse the network in a timely manner, encounter minimal packet loss, arrive in sequence, and always have adequate bandwidth.  Anything short of this will result in poor voice and video quality and dropped calls.   Quality of Service (QOS) is a mechanism on the network that provides voice and video traffic a higher priority over traffic that is less time-sensitive like web and email.

The network switches, routers, and VOIP equipment all need to support QOS. There are different ways to implement QOS.  A best practices approach is to have your VOIP equipment use the Differential Services (DiffServe) QOS mechanism.  In this scenario, the IP packets carrying VOIP are “marked” as priority packets.  All networking equipment would then be configured to honor the marking and provide priority to these packets.

Ensuring QOS end-to-end across the network is an important consideration when designing networks for VOIP and video.  For example, when a WAN protocol like MPLS is used, various “marking” techniques can get lost in translation.  The QOS mechanism used by your routers and switches on your Local Area Network need to translate to high-priority packets with your WAN provider.  Various MPLS carriers implement QOS in different ways.  You want to ensure that your provider recognizes your markings and places those packets into their own high-priority VOIP scheme.  Many WAN providers will take DiffServe packets marked with “EF” or “Express Forwarding” and place them in their “VOIP” or high priority queues.

Inflow Communications deploys ShoreTel Unified Communications Internationally to Singapore

Inflow Communications recently deployed a ShoreTel VOIP Business phone system for Fluidigm Corporation, headquartered in South San Francisco, California.  The initial phase of the project involved installing a 170-phone ShoreTel Unified Communication system in California last winter.  In August, Inflow Communications extended the capabilities of the single-image ShoreTel system into Fluidigm’s manufacturing facility in Singapore.

The Need:

Fluidigm had an antiquated Nortel business phone system installed in California.  The system was not supported, inflexible, and failing.  In addition to the need to replace this failing phone system, Fluidigm’s business was changing drastically and they needed the appropriate Unified Communications technology to meet those needs.  Their workforce was becoming increasing mobile and the current system didn’t support seamless smart phone integration.  Additionally, Fluidigm recently rolled out Salesforece.com CRM.  Fluidigm desired the ability to leverage the investment in the CRM system by tracking inbound / outbound calls to their service center, “pop” client records when they call in, and give their sales force the ability to easily dial clients via the clients’ records.   Last, Fluidigm needed to extend all of this functionality to their International offices, starting with Singapore.

The Solution:

Working with Fluidigm’s IT vendor, Inflow assisted in the design and deployment of a new Adtran POE network architecture.  On that VOIP-capable architecture, Inflow added ShoreTel ShoreGear voice appliances, application servers (for desktop call control, voicemail, reporting, etc), and IP phones.  ShoreGearT1K appliances were installed to terminate two (2) PRI circuits from the Public Switched Telephone Network.  Furthermore, ShoreTel’s native Salesforece.com integration software was added to facilitate the CRM integration.   Last, a ShoreTel Converged Conference bridge was installed to accommodate audio conferencing, secure Instant Messaging, and desktop sharing.

A 45 MB MPLS connection to Singapore was provisioned with the appropriate Quality of Service (QOS) to support video and Voice-over-IP data transmissions between the offices.  The Inflow engineering and professional training team traveled to Singapore to install the appropriate ShoreGear switches to accommodate an additional 80 IP phones and an E1 ISDN circuit.  This provided station-to-station dialing, presence management, and intelligent call routing with their US facilities.

Fluidigm plans on working with Inflow Communications to deploy ShoreTel to their Paris office next.

Inflow Communications Completes a Five-year ShoreTel Unified Communications Project for Silverton Hospital

Inflow Communications, the Northwest’s leading provider of ShoreTel VOIP technology, recently completed migrating Silverton Hospital and all of it’s clinics to the ShoreTel phone system.  Almost 5 years ago, Silverton Hospital and Inflow integrated a ShoreTel VOIP phone system with their current Executone phone system and deployed ShoreTel to their newly-built Wellsprings facility in Woodburn, Oregon.  Doing so gave Wellsprings the ability to take advantage of ShoreTel’s Unified Communication features, while giving them the ability to conduct station-to-station dialing to their legacy PBX at the main hospital.   Furthermore, it allowed Silverton to leverage their investment in the existing telecommunications infrastructure and migrate to ShoreTel VOIP as their operational and financial needs allowed.

Over time, Inflow designed and installed ShoreTel at all Silverton clinics, while maintaining the integration to the core legacy phone system.  This year, over the period of 3 months, Inflow migrated the hospital to ShoreTel VOIP on a department-by-department basis. [ read more ]

Unified Communications and Application Integration

I’m always stressing to my customers that they need to leverage their business phone system as a business-productivity tool. As you begin your research to replace your phone system, don’t just see it as an office-commodity product (like a fax machine); try to understand how the technology can align itself with your business. Along with leveraging your new VOIP phone system for voice, video, presence management, Instant Messaging, etc, how can it possibly integrate to your business applications?

Can you recognize your callers by doing a database “dip” based on caller ID and bring up the client’s record to an agent before they even answer the phone? The answer is yes. Can you “time-stamp” call activity automatically in a customer’s CRM record? Yes. Can you provide by-the-second billing information to your billing software automatically regardless if your employees are servicing your clients from their desk phone or a mobile device? Yes you can. Can you automatically make outbound calls to patients to remind them of scheduled appointments by integrating to your scheduling software? Of course!

Inflow Communications is a Portland, Oregon-based company specializing in business communications technologies – including VOIP, Unified Communications, and Video Conferencing. We can also assist you in determining if your network is adequately prepared for real-time communications applications.

A Decentralized World and How Unified Communications Keeps Pace:

The traditional enterprise model focused primarily on a central headquarters; satellite branches were an afterthought. No more. Today’s enterprise footprints are distributed far beyond the corporate headquarters to nationally and globally distributed locations that encompass several branch locations, numerous remote offices, and even home workers. Unified Communications and VOIP empowers enterprises and all workers, wherever they are, to be more “fluid” than ever. An employee may be working at a main campus one day and from a remote location the next. All work centers become business-critical and require consistent, high-performance communications solutions. We at Inflow recognize this shift from the center and our technology solutions transcend boundaries and provide consistent business communication to anyone, anytime, anywhere, on any device.