You’ve made an investment in IP (internet protocol) voice infrastructure that uses you data network. You are already enjoying lower maintenance costs, quick add/removal of voice nodes and lower infrastructure costs, it’s now time to start thinking outside the box.Since the same infrastructure now carries voice that used to carry data only, you can start thinking of how you can deploy voice devices in areas that were cost prohibitive to reach in the past. You can use WiFi or optical bridges to spread your reach, you can use the same infrastructure not only for voice but also for data and security.So once you have a location “lit” up with IP connectivity, you can use the same pipe for data, voice and devices like cameras for security and sensors for temperature/humidity, etc. The possibilities are endless; deploy paging speakers and horns that connect via WiFi, deploy IP cams or remote door locks for security or employee clock-in devices and enjoy the benefits and simplicity of putting other services over IP. It’s not just for data and voice anymore!

What most of us understand as unified communications (UC) is really not true unified communications. Some organizations are now moving on to UC with a twist by unifying landline and cellular networks.

The capability required to do this is the ability for users to seamlessly switch from landline at the office and move out of the office while staying on the call. This would mean then, that the handheld or cell phone becomes the primary business phone as well. This is not your regular UC, this is mobile UC!

This setup obviously requires some infrastructure, WiFi coverage inside the office and the systems to handle handover from WiFi to cellular without user intervention.

All this technology is here today and just waiting for companies to make their users more productive.

Voice over IP works great over WiFi like I’ve blogged before. If you’re in an office and need to have Wifi coverage for only a small area, pretty much any WiFi access point (WAP) works. When you start considering covering an entire campus or several acres of property with a signal, you have to have specific equipment in place.

There are many manufacturers that make WAPs that can be configured in a mesh configuration, Aruba, Cisco, Orinoco and Juniper come to mind, but these are all high dollar WAPs. When you’re on a budget, look no further than companies providing devices for small/home business, like D-Link and Netgear. Netgear actually uses technology licensed from Aruba, but I’m not a big fan of Netgear, I’ve had too many bad experiences with their products.

D-Link makes both indoor and outdoor devices that can be used in a variety of configurations including Wireless Distribution System (WDS). -Link’s DWL line of WAPs, specifically DWL-8200AP, DWL-3200AP, DWL-7700AP and DWL-2700AP do a great job of covering your campus in a wireless mesh.

It’s always a good idea to not have too many wireless hops, use hard links via cable whenever possible to keep you latency low. If you need to deploy a large number of WAPs (I’m talking about 500) then it’s always a good idea to go with a company that specializes in this area like Aruba. As the number of WAPs increases, so does the need for a better management solution.

I’ll blog about management solutions and interfaces in another blog.

I’ve been using voice over IP for a while and it works great, but what about video over IP?

Although relatively new, I’ve been using video over IP for over a year now. I’m basically using it for entertainment, streaming media over IP via an 802.11g connection to my entertainment system.

I’ve tried several streaming applications to achieve this, by far, the best is Tversity. I run this on a Windows XP box and I have couple of media boxes, DSM-320 and DSM-520 that display video on a big screen TV.

I’ve also heard from some people that a voice conversation does not work very well over WiFi, I say, if live video can work over WiFi then voice is no problem. If it’s not working on your network, look at some other trouble spots.