LAN QoS for VoIP – How to Optimize Quality of Service for VoIP on LAN

lanqosvoip

Is LAN QoS required for VoIP applications?
We have basic network infrastructure:

PC (Softphone) -GigEth-> [Switch] -GigEth-> [Router/Firewall] -> Internet (100 Mbps) -> [ITSP]

Voice traffic flows via switch and firewall towards my IP Telephony Service Provider. We have around 50 users which may place simultaneous calls. (Bandwidth per call is around 80 Kbps – Kilobits per second) and Softphone doesn't mark traffic with DSCP, use BE (0). We have received some complaints about voice quality. I believe 1 GB ethernet is more than enough per PC.

Best Answer

internet speed seams to be very good (80k/user X 50 user = 4000K = 4M) sure QOS is great thing to think about but first you need to make sure of the next.
you must think about
1- Uplinks between switches and each other (specially when it seams you run spread network). lets say you attached the users to 3 24 port switchs for example and connect switches to each other by 1G uplink so you fail into bottle neck, so how you connect your switches to each other very affect the performance of any traffic switching.
2- uplink between switches and your router , port speed of each also can be bottle neck.
3- you must think about storm control and broad cast control , if you run over cisco switches may you adapt storm control and broad cast level.
4- Firewall traffic inspection may delay the voice traffic specially you run soft phones which may use the same range of IPs as normal Data . (you may configure your firewall with roles and polices which allow SIP traffic with no inspection based on port number or protocol type)
5- may you can make sure of your internet speed per each user to make sure it is equal or greater 80 KBPS.

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