IP Softphones - QOS and config

[stauftm]

Hi everyone, I don't recall seeing this in any of our subjects but in regards to IP softphones what is everyone doing for design/implementation?

With my physical IP phones I'm using ADAC to handle all my QOS with the network. I am also using DHCP 'Full' for the configuration of the phone - connecting it to the signaling server, port, etc. So I'm just wondering what others are doing with the softphone and with those thoughts in mind - QOS and config of the phone.

Thanks!
Todd

[Flintstone]

Hi Todd,

On our site we are officially not allowed to use IP softphones as the data and voice traffic should be on two different Vlans.  Unofficially, we manually configure a very small number of IP softphones on the data Vlan without any QoS provision.  As we separate our data and voice Vlans using ACLs, we have also had to 'poke' ACL holes for these particular users to get to the signalling server etc.  We also have a user that uses his IP softphone from home via a VPN successfully.

CheerZ

[Michael McNamara]

Hi Todd,

We're using the IP 2050 softphone for our work at home call center users along with Juniper's Network Connect (SSL VPN) solution. We have about 20 users of which about 15 are online daily. The solution works pretty good and call quality has been pretty good as well considering that this is over the public Internet. We usually require the home user to have either cable or fiber to the home and a mimium of 5Mbps down and 2Mbps up. We had issues with xDSL subscribers with 1.5Mbps down and 384Kbps up so we now have minimum requirements. In short we're throwing bandwidth at the problem rather than working out the QoS issues.

If this is going to be over your internal network I believe you can have the DiffServ QoS bits set in the packets from the desktop/laptop.

With respect to your overall question... you are in very new territory, blazing a trail for others to follow.

Feel free to share what you learn from your endeavors!

Good Luck!

[Dominik]

Hi Todd,

I personal prefer a static configuration. This will make more work in the rollout stage but is completly stable when it is done.. I personal donīt trust any Voice engeneers and donīt like that  the QoS marking
is made by the IP Phones. In fact the voice engeneers most times didnīt know what they are doing I do the QoS marking on the switches. I use a simple QoS policy that markes all incomming packets in the voice VLAN.

Cheers