The Care and Management of IP Telephony Applications

IP telephony isn't just another network application. It is highly sensitive, especially to issues such as delay and packet loss. In most data networks, if a data packet or e-mail packet is a few seconds late, it's generally not critical. If voice packets are off by only 30 to 100 thousandths of a second, callers hear a quality problem and start to complain. Even if IP telephony runs over a network that also handles data traffic, that doesn't mean that IP voice traffic can be managed with tools designed to manage data networks. True IP telephony management solutions are built from the ground up to support IP telephony rather than tacking on VoIP support to data management products. IP telephony management should consider the end-user experience.