Are you prepared to move your phones to the cloud?

Available ports on most IP Phones

For most offices the answer is yes but you should consider a few things before taking the leap. The first thing is your network infrastructure. The easiest way to hook up your new cloud based phones on the desktop is by using existing Cat 5 cabling. You can even have the computer share a connection with the phone by using the ports on the back of the phone. In this situation a V-LAN might be necessary but not for most small to medium sized offices. For locations that don't have a cat5 cable but you want a phone such as lobbies, conference rooms, or break rooms wifi enabled phones are a great solution.

Once you know how you are actually going to connect each phone to the network then it is time to consider power sources. Unlike traditional digital or analog phones, IP phones require power to be supplied by an auxiliary source because the cable from the wall won’t do it anymore. The phones themselves usually come with power supplies and can be individually plugged or you could implement a Power Over Ethernet (POE) switch to power all the phones from the network.

Try using a POE so you have one less thing to plug into the power brick under your desk

There are really two schools of thought when it comes to deciding how to power up the phones. The most popular is that by utilizing a POE the desktop stays cleaner because there are less cords. However, I have met IT professionals who prefer the power supplies and plugging in phones individually because it eliminates a single point of failure. The truth is there really is no right answer, but as a person who regularly installs the phones for my clients I much prefer a Power Over Ethernet Switch because of the ease.

The last piece of the puzzle is your internet. The first questions you have to ask is, “is it fast enough?”. You are probably looking at 50kbps to 75kbps per voice call, so if you regularly have 10 people on the phone that will use up about half a megabyte up and down speed. If you are not using video conferencing and plan on taking advantage of that service each of those calls will eat up about 1.5mbps up and down.

It is important to understand that this is in addition to the regular internet uses going on in the office. You don’t want to max out your internet if you are using hosted phones because if you do then you will have packet loss which causes choppy and/or dropped calls. Packet loss occurs when the internet reaches capacity and has to decide on what data packet goes first. Since some packets are getting pushed aside they drop or are lost. Normally, this would not be a big deal. If you are downloading an email and a packet gets lost then another one will be there soon enough. However, with voice traffic the data packets have to be delivered in real time so packet loss can be a huge deal.

One way to address packet loss is by using an SD-WAN device. It is important to understand that your internet is dumb it does not know the difference between an email packet and a voice packet. SD-WAN adds intelligence to your internet so it will prioritize real time services over downloads. This is particularly useful in an office where employees download large files since a large file download can destroy a call if it eats up all the internet even for a few minutes. I plan to write about SD-WAN in a future blog so please come back to learn more

Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a great day

Donovan