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Net execs at Seattle daily cite lessons learned from convergence project,
SEATTLE-While there are many preconceived notions about voice over IP the reality is often different from the theory, says Thomas Dunkerley communications manager/ IT at The Seattle Times.
Washington state's largest daily newspaper is in the thick of a companywide upgrade to an Avaya IP telephony system that will see more than 1,200 IP phones deployed on employees' desktops by the end of next year. As the newspaper's telecom and data network staff work together to converge their respective environments, they've discovered some pleasant surprises and learned some interesting lessons.
For one, Dunkerley says, VoIP isn't as fussy as you might expect. When the Times first got going with VoIP it experimented with IP phones on its existing infrastructure - shared 10/100 Bay Networks hubs (with 50% utilized bandwidth) and Category 3 wire. It worked fine.
"We had a phone on one hub that was averaging 60% to 70% utilization, and you would get some pops and snaps, but nothing the person on the other end noticed:' says Paul DeWees, the Times' network systems analyst.
Although the organization is upgrading its data network infrastructure and adding quality of service (QoS) in the process, these early tests were reassuring.
"My biggest nightmare when we started this project," DeWees says, "was hearing a user say,`My phone isn't working; what's wrong with the network?"' So far, that hasn't happened.
IP phones are now running on about 200 desktops at the Times' headquarters and bureaus.
The Times began its convergence project three months ago when the time came to upgrade its Lucent/Avaya Definity G3 and G2 PBX systems. At first the company looked to upgrade the G3 PBX's TDM central processing unit, based on Avaya's homegrown Unix. Instead, Dunkerley went with redundant Avaya S8700s Media Servers, which are Intel- and Linux-based IP servers.
The Avaya S8700s could not have arrived a day too soon, Dunkerley says, as...