Voice over IP is here to stay. Businesses are eager to buy into the operational and cost-saving benefits of VoIP that Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) just cannot match.
Power to your IP phones
While the features within the VoIP handsets are essential, the underlying PoE or PoE+ infrastructure to power the solution is mission-critical. Selecting the right switches has a direct impact on the final performance, cost and security of your solution.
Pick the right PoE
Whether you're expanding an existing VoIP network, refreshing an existing one or starting from scratch, your WLAN is critical to the overall success.
The following guide will help you better understand and decide which features you need for a successful VoIP deployment.
Professional network site survey
To help you find the right WLAN for today, with the capacity to power tomorrow, TP-Link offers customers a Network Site survey service. Because each office and business is unique, one of our highly experienced network engineers will conduct a professional Site Survey to establish the current network strengths and weaknesses. Our engineer then prepares your bespoke report providing best of breed network solutions so you can achieve your business goals.
Contact the team to find out more about this complimentary service.
Essential features for VoIP deployments
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PoE power budget
Each IP phone handset has a power budget, the minimum power required over Ethernet for it to function. When considering suitable switches, check the power budget per port to ensure that it is sufficient to power your IP Phone.
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PoE or PoE+
Check whether your handsets require PoE (802.3af) or the latest standard PoE+ (802.3at). If your handset is PoE+, then you must use a corresponding PoE+ switch.
• (802.3af) is the original PoE standard and offers 15.4W of power to the Ethernet port which equates to 12.95W delivered to an IP Phone up to 100 meters from the switch. In other words, a PoE switch is limited to a power budget of 12.95 Watts per port.
• (802.3at) or PoE+ is the latest standard which almost doubles the available budget, providing 30W of power to the Ethernet port, of which 25.5W can be delivered up to 100 meters from the switch. In short, PoE+ enables you to power IP phones with a higher power budget and future proof your network with the latest backwards compatible power over Ethernet standards.
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Quality of Service (QoS)
Voice and video traffic are particularly susceptible to disruption as a result of packet loss, latency and jitter. Picking a switch with QoS means your network administrator can designate traffic priority based on a variety of options including port priority, 802.1P priority and DSCP priority for silky smooth data transfer across the network.
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Voice VLAN
A VLAN for interruption sensitive applications like real-time video or voice applications will improve your overall network performance. You will find VLAN functionality on Smart Switches.
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Port security
It's second nature to apply security to a wireless network, its equally important to lock down your Ethernet network too. MAC Binding is one of the most efficient ways to ensure there are no rogue devices on your network; it effectively locks a specific device to a single port on your switch. In other words, if someone unplugs your VoIP handset and tries to connect a laptop, because it has a different MAC address the port security will disable the port denying the laptop access to your precious network.
PoE Class Switches
