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Up to the Test: Indirect Channel has a Partner in the LAN

Up to the Test Indirect channel has a partner in the LAN Channelvision Magazine, June 2006 by Josh Long Indirect channels selling IP phone services to small and mid-sized businesses may have a fantastic network services provider, but the quality of the wide area network is just half the equation. The local area network must be configured properly and have adequate bandwidth to support voice communications over a data network, and those requirements frequently demand making changes to the LAN, according to some technology experts. "Voice is data now in the IP world. However, the quality of service requirements are generally quite different from raw data," says Harley Stowell, president and CEO of LineSider, Inc., a Charlestown, Mass.-based network management software company whose customers include New Global Telecom and Inland Northwest Health Services. "You can run into real service problems, and it’s a fairly frequent situation." The routers and switches often may not be configured properly, Stowell says, and the small business may lack sufficient bandwidth to support the new services. That’s where companies like DecisionOne Corp., a national IT services provider, can help. Devon, Penn.-based DecisionOne is rolling out numerous services for channel partners, original equipment manufacturers and wholesalers to ensure LANs are equipped to support voice over IP. DecisionOne executives say the IT provider can enable channel partners with a local or regional presence to serve customers across the United States because DecisionOne has a national team of professionals. The process begins with a service dubbed "site survey," in which DecisionOne employees examine the physical equipment at the small or medium-sized business. "If you don’t have the right type of cabling in place for VoIP, it’s not going to work properly," says Marcia Branco, DecisionOne’s product manager for networking – communications. "There are all types of cabling issues you need to look at." DecisionOne then remotely discovers elements in a company’s network and simulates VoIP traffic to determine how the network scores on such metrics as jitter and latency. "At that point, you’ll have learned if" the network can support VoIP "and most of the time the network is not ready," says Geoff Drayton, vice president of business development with DecisionOne. VoIP equipment often is touted as "plug and play," but Drayton says even Cisco engineers concede that the gear won’t perform as advertised under certain situations, such as if the router is improperly configured. "It’s easy enough to bring up three or four points where it’s no longer plug and play," he says. In a small office with 10 to 20 employees, however, a company with adequate connectivity, a competent service provider and good telephones may not require a LAN assessment, says Jeffrey Pearl, managing partner of IP5280 Communications, an Englewood, Colo.-based VoIP provider for businesses. "There’s not a lot that can foul up voice over IP" in a small office if the above metrics are satisfied, says Pearl, a former CEO of ICG Communications who also co-founded LineSider. Nonetheless, even performing a LAN assessment doesn’t guarantee that a VoIP service will perform as smoothly for a small business as promised. Stowell says network service providers are still working out kinks in IP backbone networks, and telephone numbers may not get properly switched from a traditional phone service to VoIP. "There are a lot of moving parts in voice over IP networking," says Stowell, whose company has partnered with DecisionOne to implement technology. "One bad configuration on a router can blow up a whole voice over IP network, and there’s no cohesive management layer that keeps everything in alignment right now." Still, Stowell says it would be a mistake for a channel partner not to offer a small business the option of performing a LAN assessment when implementing VoIP. Even if a small business is merely sending out emails with attachments, "You still have tension for the bandwidth, and that’s where you run into quality of service issues," such as dropped calls and echo over the telephone, Stowell says. Drayton contends that failing to conduct a proper LAN assessment could shrink or obliterate a channel partner’s margins if the independent sales rep or reseller has to visit the premises repeatedly and field calls for weeks over problems with the network that could have been resolved before installation. A channel partner "may acquire a customer but all this upfront planning, all the implementation has to be done in a timely, consistent manner," Branco says. "Otherwise, you’re not going to have a happy customer." CV View this article online here: http://www.channelvisionmagazine.com/showArticle.php?id=35