Unified Comms
& Voice

ViBE - Making VoIP Work

The Problem with VoIP

The concept of VoIP seems too good to be true; free or cheap calls made over existing broadband connectivity, saving you money on both monthly line rental and call charges. Businesses with multiple sites would be able to network those sites together in such a way as to provide not only free calls between them, but also allow each site to share a common telephony system so that only a single PBX would be necessary to service the entire estate.

In reality VoIP suffers from one big problem: How do you get voice and data traffic to share existing connectivity? Standard ADSL broadband connections are in reality what many SME's rely on for connectivity so any VoIP solution needs to operate within the small amount of bandwidth that standard ADSL offers.

Implementing a VoIP telephone system over an existing broadband connection means that voice data competes with other data traffic (mail servers, web usage etc). In a typical office environment this would mean that as users made simultaneous calls, voice data would begin to compete with other data that shared the same broadband connection and call quality would suffer. In a business environment call quality is vital and so VoIP suddenly becomes an unviable solution.

Other problems associated with using VoIP over a broadband ADSL link include:

Unlike browsing the web, voice call data is limited to the slower ADSL upload speed (typically 256Kbit/s).
Voice data can be compressed (much like MP3 audio data) yet over broadband this is typically not done correctly.
Broadband is usually part of a public or at least shared network, making security a concern.

Voice over Internet protocol Bandwidth Enhancer

ViBE stands for: Voice over Internet protocol Bandwidth Enhancer.

ViBE Technology overcomes the problems with VoIP over ADSL by treating voice data as priority traffic. Call quality is always maintained as voice data packets are streamed and spacing between packets is managed for optimum voice quality.

G.729 compression means that less bandwidth is taken by any voice data. ViBE allows compression technology (G.729 codec) to be implemented fully meaning that a call only uses 8Kbit/s over ADSL rather than the usual 42Kbit/s.

At least 60 simultaneous calls are now available over a UK average broadband connection as opposed to the 3 that are conventionally possible.

Voice and data can readily coexist on a single link. Data transfer rates are not compromised by the fact that voice is present. Classes of data can be given their own share of available bandwidth in a much more granular manner.

Sites that have ViBE links can be joined together to form private networks, which means that security is easier to control.

Backup links can be implemented which can be activated without losing calls in progress.

Key Benefits of ViBE

Enables delivery of SIP trunking at least 60 ports on a single ADSL connection with only 768Kbps upstream bandwidth, making it a replacement offering for E1 / T1 circuits
Built in switch-over to secondary IP connectivity enables resilient services to be deployed
QOS and resiliency options enable delivery of chargeable SLA's
Dynamic and seamless blending of Voice and Data using QOS allowing FULL utilisation of all purchased bandwidth increasing overall throughput for both voice and data traffic
Enables low Broadband bandwidth to be used for VPN connectivity in branch / retail environments offering simultaneous Voice and Data access eliminating need for expensive network alternatives or multiple connections
Enables greater density of Centrex / Hosted sets per broadband or other circuit resulting in cheaper deployment costs
Improves user experience increasing rate of adoption
Dynamic compression if required for voice traffic
Supports multiple Voice protocols
Business quality voice traffic on IP
Savings by using a single circuit for both Voice and Data traffic
Overall a better user experience
Increased security for both voice and data traffic