How SD-WAN Improves VoIP Performance and Reliability?
Voice over Internet Protocol uses traditional phone lines to receive and make calls. The technology has been in use for a long time and has many benefits. It is scalable, flexible, and can be integrated with other applications, apart from being pocket-friendly. Despite being widely used by businesses across the globe, it has some demerits like packet loss, latency, jitter, low quality, and security issues. It can affect the performance of the VoIP users. So, how to improve VoIP performance and reliability? Read on to learn the solutions.
Software Defined Wide Area Network is a technology that improves VoIP’s performance and security. Software is used to control the network architecture in SD-WAN. The traffic is managed and routed across multiple links like LTE, broadband, MPLS, or satellite. With SD-WAN, the bandwidth, Quality of Service and path selection can be dynamically corrected depending on the real-time network conditions. Moreover, SD-WAN offers centralised visibility and monitors network performance and security, simplifying the management and deployment of devices.
Does SD-WAN truly improve VoIP quality?
SD-WAN for VoIP improves internet call quality by reducing packet loss, jitter, and latency. Congestion, interference, or error results in loss of voice packets; this is called packet loss. Jitter is a fluctuation in voice packets. Latency is a delay in receiving and sending voice data. SD-WAN uses intelligent path selection for VoIP calls through metrics like jitter, latency, and packet loss. The sensitivity and vitality of the traffic determines VoIP traffic priority. With SD-WANs, WAN optimisation can reduce bandwidth consumption, and FEC or forward error correction helps recover lost voice packets.
SD-WAN improves VoIP reliability
To provide continuous and uninterrupted services, availability and resilience is the key. With SD-WAN multiple WAN links, VoIP reliability is improved. The WAN links help create a redundant and diverse network with the assistance of load balancing and automatic failover to protect from call dropping and enhance the call quality. The security features protect from cyberattacks, improving the performance of VoIP.
SD-WAN challenges for VoIP
Like any other technology, SD-WAN also comes with challenges that should be taken care of before its adoption. The challenge lies in installing and configuring new devices, services, and software at branch locations and integrating with existing infrastructure, cloud services, and VoIP systems. The vendors follow their standards, protocols, and standards. It can lead to an imbalance in network performance and impacts its security. SD-WAN management and maintenance require a high skill set, which may be challenging. Regularly supervising and updating policies, configurations, and network conditions are necessary. This may not be possible for SMEs, as they do not have the resources and workforce to run an exclusive IT department. In this connection, choosing managed SD-WAN services for ease of deployment and maintenance would be wise.
Tips for choosing SD-WAN for VoIP
Finding top-in-class SD-WAN solutions is the key to combating SD-WAN challenges for VoIP. Finding the right vendor is important if you want to reach your organisation’s goals without any hiccups. There is no one-size-fits-all; several factors must be considered before choosing a suitable SD-WAN solution for VoIP. A decision must be made considering metrics, security, scalability, flexibility, visibility, compatibility, control, interoperability, and features. Above this, cost and value cannot be overlooked. Your SD-WAN solution should be compatible with your existing network architecture, cloud provider, VoIP system, and other applications.
Undoubtedly, SD-WAN is a transformative technology, giving a new lease of life to VoIP. SD-WAN is an ultimate solution provider to improve VoIP performance and reliability. Enterprises can use it to manage data centres. It is an efficient solution to manage multiple connections like broadband, MPLS, LTE, etc. Even sophisticated network systems can be operated easily with SD-WAN for VoIP.
Forget about choppy internet calls; even in remote locations, you can enjoy uninterrupted high-quality voice calls at an affordable cost. SD-WAN recognises the best path to running your applications smoothly in the same connection tunnel without compromising on bandwidth and quality. Even with multiple applications, SD-WAN allocates load balancing between more than one parallel connection. SD-WAN is the new age network solution promising high-quality voice and video streams. It is estimated that the voice quality performance of SD-WAN is 35% better when compared to non-SD-WAN configurations.
SMOAD SD-WAN solutions allow for secure work from home or working from remote locations with complete network redundancy.
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