Telus Communications has won a CAD176 million (USD140.6 million) seven-year contract with the Canadian federal government's Shared Services Canada to provide VoIP telephony, instant messaging and desktop videoconferencing. The deal is in conjunction with a federal decision to axe 80,000 traditional landlines in favour of VoIP; Shared Services Canad...

NMSaaS Webinar November 24th at 2:00pm EST Are you tired of "Tool Sprawl" and large CAPEX intestments when trying to deliver Enterprise network Management for Network Monitoring, VoIP Monitoring and Config Management to your organization?  This Wedinar will provide an in depth demonstration on how to move your enterprise network to the cloud using the following solutions: Network ManagementVoIP monitoringConfiguration ManagementNetFlow Monitoring  

It’s one of the most dreaded calls to get for an IT staff member – the one where a user complains about the quality of their VoIP call or video conference. The terms used to describe the problem are reminiscent of a person who brings their car in for service because of a strange sound “ I hear a crackle”, or “it sounds like the other person is in a tunnel” or “I could only hear every other word – and then the call dropped”. None of these are good, and unfortunately, they are all very hard to dia...

Your looking at doing an upgrade to your VoIP system, as it approaching end of life.   But your network has changed substantially since your first deployment, making this an ideal time to investigate new VoIP systems and ensure your existing monitoring solution can keep pace with the upgrade. Here are 4 critical areas for consideration to determine whether your monitoring tools can keep pace with the new demands of a VoIP upgrade. 1. SUPPORTING MORE THAN ONE IT TEAM: If you have a voic...

Industry Analysts say that approximately 85% of today’s networks will require voip quality testing upgrades to their data networks to properly support high-quality VoIP and video traffic. Organizations are always looking for a way to reduce costs, and that’s why they often try to deploy VoIP by switching voice traffic over to a LAN or WAN links. In a lot of cases the data networks which the business has chosen handle VoIP traffic accordingly, generally speaking voice traffic is uniquely time sen...

Managing VoIP quality is a constant headache for engineers. Here are some ways to avoid some common problems. While VoIP has been considered mainstream in the enterprise for the past couple of years, network engineers still face a challenge to ensure consistent VoIP quality. Unplanned or surprise changes to the network can leave end users unhappy and administrators scratching their heads. Even the smallest configuration and setting changes have the potential to immediately and adversely impact a...

Network configuration management is the process of organizing and maintaining information about all the components of a computer network. When a network needs repair, alteration, development or advancements, the administrator refers to the network configuration management database to determine the best course of action. This database contains the locations and network addresses of all hardware devices, as well as information about the programs, versions and updates installed in network computers...

Industry Analysts say that approximately 85% of today’s networks will require upgrades to their data networks to properly support high-quality VoIP and video traffic. Organizations are always looking for a way to reduce costs, and that’s why they often try to deploy VoIP by switching voice traffic over to a LAN or WAN links. In a lot of cases the data networks which the business has chosen cannot handle VoIP traffic accordingly, generally speaking voice traffic is uniquely time sensitive, it can...

The Biggest Videoconferencing Challenge? Real-Time Performance Management Did you know that according to Enterprise Management Associates EMA™ analysts, 95 percent of organizations have VoIP on their network – and more than half have deployed videoconferencing? IP videoconferencing has strong appeal to businesses through its promise of significant cost and time savings. But how simple is the transition to video? For end users, video communications are expected to be smooth, seamless, and simple....

VoIP Management Overview There are any number of VoIP management solutions available in today’s market place. However, when you start to drill-­down into the capabilities of these tools they tend to focus on the performance elements of your network infrastructure and associated VoIP metrics (e.g. RTT, RTD\Latency, Packet Loss, Jitter, Moss, R-­‐Factor etc.) , assumptions are made on infrastructure and fault management being in place, so it is vitally important to assess the complete picture of y...

How often have you been told the network is at fault, when your gut tells you it’s an application issue? The primary challenge is determining where to look. If this sounds all too familiar, you’re in good company. In the recently released Seventh Annual State of the Network Global Study, 74% of network pros indicated their largest challenge was determining whether the problem was caused by the Network, System, or Application. And, according to IT analyst firm TRAC Research, teams spent on averag...

Ixia Network Visibility Solutions welcomes a guest blogger today, Tim O’Neill from LoveMyTool. Network engineers and managers need to think about today’s compliance requirements and the limitations of conventional data access methods. This article is focused on TAPs versus port mirroring/SPAN technology. SPAN is not all bad, but one must be aware of its limitations. As managed switches are an integral part of the infrastructure, one must be careful not to establish a failure point. Understanding...