This Week’s Topic: VoIP

PERFORMANCE TOOLBOX: Brix Networks' TestYourVoIP.com
In the not-too-distant past, phone call quality line testing was performed with live recruits sitting on the receiving end of a call. These recruits would listen in on the test call and rank quality on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the highest possible rating) and then calculate the average -- particularly the mean -- opinion of all listening parties and then assigning call quality accordingly. This rating is called the Mean Opinion Score, or MOS for short, and remains the benchmark by which all voice calls are measured to provide a fair and impartial view of call quality.

TECHNOLOGY BRIEF: An Introduction to VoIP Protocols
Voice over IP (VoIP) offers the vision of a converged network carrying multiple different types of traffic (voice, video, and data to name a few). To implement this vision, VoIP employs a number of different protocols. VoIP has a unique set of performance requirements that make it a challenge for any data network. Understanding the operation of core VoIP protocols is a first step in understanding the performance requirements that VoIP will place on your network.

THE WAY WE SEE IT: Toll Quality to Make a Come-Back
“Can you hear me now” is more than a mantra chanted several times a day by the cellular faithful. “Can you hear me now” signals the general acceptance of convenience over quality. Widespread CYHMN? means the market embraces the notion that being able to make a call from the car while tooling down I-95 at 80 miles an hour — however bad the call quality and regardless of the number of redials — is superior to finding a stationary pay phone and dropping in some coins.

READING LIST: VoIP (revised)
Academic reading lists, Online VoIP tools & resources, and VoIP Books.

FEATURED WHITEPAPER: Implications for NSM Vendors on impact of Mobile Technology
This paper from industry analysts Simon Forge and Richard L. Ptak, Ptak, Noel & Associates offers an in-depth analysis of the future of Mobile Technology and its impact on hardware, software and society at large.

FEATURED WHITEPAPER: IMS, the IP Multimedia Subsystem, and Its Industry Significance
IMS is now on everybody's lips whenever new services or major acquisitions are cited. But why -- and what really is IMS -- just what does it do? In this short paper, Simon Forge and Richard L. Ptak Ptak, Noel & Associates answer these questions in a brief, useful fashion, and offer some suggestions about what management solutions suppliers and telecommunications industry operational support platforms of all types should be doing today