Reliable VoIP

QoS metrics are important, and several companies have products that measure packet loss, jitter, latency and so on. But you can have perfect QoS, and your VoIP system can still be defective for all sorts of reasons.

I spoke with Gurmeet Lamba, VP of Engineering, at Clarus Systems at the Internet Telephony Expo this week. He said that even if a VoIP system is perfectly configured on installation, it can decay over time to the point of unusability. Routers go down and are brought up again with minor misconfigurations; moves, adds and changes accumulate bad settings and policy violations.

VoIP systems are rarely configured perfectly even on installation. For example, IP phones have built-in switches so you can plug your PC into your desk phone. Those ports are unlocked by default. But some phones are installed in public areas like lobbies. It’s easy for installers to forget to lock those ports, so anybody sitting in the lobby can plug their laptop into the LAN. There are numerous common errors of this kind. Clarus has an interesting product that actively and passively tests for them; it monitors policy compliance and triggers alarms on policy violations.

Clarus uses CTI to do active testing of your VoIP system, looking for badly configured devices and network bottlenecks. Currently it works only on Cisco voice networks, but Clarus plans to support other manufacturers.

Clarus started out focusing on automated testing of latency, jitter and packet loss for IP phone systems. It went on to add help desk support with remote control of handsets, and the ability to roll back phone settings to known good configurations.

The next step was to add “Business Information,” certifying deployment configurations, and helping to manage ongoing operations with change management and vulnerability reports. Clarus’ most recent announcement added passive monitoring based on a policy-based rules engine.

Clarus claims to have tested over 350 thousand endpoints to date. It has partners that offer network monitoring services.

One Reply to “Reliable VoIP”

  1. I have been wondering why our IP phone systems have been acting funny at work and I bet our new system is all unlocked so it is easy for it to go down. I will have to mention to the manager that I read about this.

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