Question

VoIP Vlans or Tagging

Asked by: goinggreat

I have a 150 handset base and about 100 pc's.  What is the best way to ensure voice quality. QOS tagging on the packets or VLans.   VoIP vendor is not recommending vlan just tagging..  I like the idea of not using vlans for simplicity and keeping everything on one network.    However, primary focus in call quality?  I was wondering what some of the experts thought?

We are using a asterisk solution with polycom phones.

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Asked On
2008-01-10 at 06:16:17ID23072454
Tags

vlan

,

voip

,

polycom

Topics

Voice Over IP

,

Miscellaneous Networking

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: grbladesPosted on 2008-01-10 at 08:01:53ID: 20628141

The use of VLANs is often just an easy way to get the voice traffic tagged and keep it separate which a lof of people like to do.
However a lot of the time people want to use software VoIP clients or copy data off the VoIP system so there are good reasons for the voice and data to be on the same network and in this case just using tagging is the best way. The phones normally set the correct QOS settings in the packets so it is normally just a case of configuring the switch to honour the settings.

P.S be care full using the term 'tagging' as it can apply to VLANS and QOS.

 

by: bfasonPosted on 2008-01-10 at 08:26:23ID: 20628402

If these are all in one location then I would definately apply vlans. You have approx 250 devices in single broadcast domain and that's a lot of unnecessary chatter for your phones to have to deal with. Vlan configuration is pretty simple on most switches.

In most cases you would put your asterisk server and the phones in the same vlan and it's a simple matter of routing if you need to transfer data between vlans to work with your asterisk server from pc's located in the data vlan.

Hope this helps
B

 

by: jdechiaroPosted on 2008-01-12 at 08:48:27ID: 20644475

ideally you want to use both. tagging/ traffic shaping on voice packets is enough to ensure quality but i've seen far too many instances of users sticking hubs under their desks for use as network extension cords and this does not play well with voip. by logically segmenting the network you are also ensuring you will not be subject to broadcasts and potentially viruses / spyware runnign on end user pc's. latency over data networks is not likely to be noticed but call quality degregation will. If you are using cisco switches, polycom phones support cdp to get the voice vlan.

 

by: goinggreatPosted on 2008-01-17 at 04:05:25ID: 20680446

Thanks.  We are going to use vlans.  We were looking at des-1228p web smart dlink switches.  My next question is how do you keep polycom sip phones on proper ip address and vlan..

 

by: jdechiaroPosted on 2008-01-17 at 06:29:03ID: 20681531

i'm not familiar with the dlink switch. At minimum you will need the switch to support vlan trunking, if you only have one ethernet drop per user workstation.  If the switch supports cdp then the phones will get their vlan automatically, otherwise you can manually configure the polycom vlan id in the ethernet menu on the phone.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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