VoIP requires robust infrastructure that has to be operational 24×7. If your email goes down for 10 minutes it’s not as critical, but if your voice services go down for 10 minutes, it’s a huge deal!

Keeping in mind how critical voice communications is, it is essential to plan the network accordingly. Don’t go cheap on the essential infrastructure components like network switches, routers and even cabling. Most companies tend to use the cheapest contractor for cabling when it can be one of the most critical components of the network that can haunt you for years to come. Make sure who-ever installs your cabling tests and certifies it for the amount of data that will be pushed through it.

Use intelligent switches that support multiple VLANs and QoS. This will come in handy to segregate different types of traffic, like data and voice traffic and prioritize voice traffic. VLANs allow you to have one physical network but logically have it split into multiple, so your voice can travel on VLAN1 while your data travels on VLAN2. You can have other services like video travel on VLAN3.

This not only provides your users a better experience for different voice, data and video services but also will assist in quicker troubleshooting of network issues as they arise and allow for testing of new services before deployment.

Remember, your entire infrastructure has to perform together. You can’t have one switch supporting VLANs while others don’t and you can’t have switches supporting VLANs while your routers don’t. Make the investment in the beginning and enjoy a successful roll-out instead of having to patch things on a routine basis later on.

If you don’t have in-house expertise for some of these technologies, it makes sense to go to a third party. If your planning is right from the beginning, it will be easier to scale your network and provide the quality of service your users expect.

Remember, you’ll have to provide POE (Power over Ethernet) for your VoIP nodes (handsets). You should have power backup on the POE circuit so your phones will stay operational even if there’s a power failure, users will expect this.