Page 14 - Telecom Reseller July-August 2017

14 Telecom Reseller One foot in
on your made-for-data network to accommodate the voice incursion, let’s review some of the technological adaptations that allow voice on there to begin with.
Voice is analog. It is not digital. Voice communication can only go onto a data
network if it is somehow converted into a digital equivalent that can be converted back into sound when it reaches its destination. e conversion of audible sound into data is called quantization. e process of quantizing voice is typically
done by sampling the sound at eight thousand times per second, assigning one of eight bits to each sample. is yields a 64-thousand bit-per- second datastream that can be reproduced at the other end. With the additional overhead (added packet information) required to get the voice datastream across the network, adding several conversations at once to the data portion of the network tra c can quickly outpace all of the rest of the data. Fortunately, that has been addressed, as well.
Compression as a technology has been around for decades. Many fax machines are capable
of compressing the information transmitted
in order to shorten the time of the (o en long distance) phone call. In the same way, voice communication can be compressed into a much smaller datastream with (in some cases) almost undetectable loss of quality. ere have been many such schemes, also called CODECs, of which a common one is called G.729. It cuts
the actual voice datastream down to 1/8 of the original size (the overhead remains the same).
A basic element of a data network is the ability to recover from lost packets by tracking and retransmitting any portions of the data that do not arrive intact and on time. e packets that handle this are a variety called Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP. ese TCP packets cannot be used for voice communication. It would result in poor quality when missing packets were re-sent and inserted into the
sound at the other end in the wrong place.
July/August 2017
It’s much better to just drop any defective or missing packets and listen to the part that does arrive as expected. Remember, you have 8,000 samples per second. You can lose some and still understand what is said. To accomplish this, voice uses exclusively packets designated User Datagram Protocol, or UDP. ese packets are “best e ort” delivery.
A subset of UDP packets is used to further enhance the delivery of voice packets in a timely manner: Real-time Transport Protocol, or RTP. is streaming-speci c protocol improves the quality of sound by giving special attention to packets that may arrive late or out of sequence (called jitter).
Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP) is another piece of the puzzle that uses TCP to monitor and suggest controls to the network devices that can further improve the eventual voice quality. It monitors how well the network is accommodating these “best e ort” packets so the application that controls the voice element can compensate for and report problems.
As you can see, technology has adopted voice into its family, at least to a point. Still, there is much to do to make sure your network can carry high quality voice to rival your old PBX. at will come in future articles.
Please, if any of this is unclear of if you have questions, let me know! n
SkySwitch Gives Resellers an Edge with New Mobility Solution
White Label Resellers Can Now Deliver A Better Mobile UC Experience To Users
LAKELAND, FL - SkySwitch has announced that it has integrated ReachUC, a suite of advanced UC applications and tools, into the SkySwitch Platform. ReachUC is now available to all SkySwitch white label resellers.
Industry research shows the immediate need for the truly uni ed communication experience delivered by ReachUC. In a recent survey conducted by Canam Research on behalf of Avaya, it was found that 60% of employees spend more than a quarter of their time away from their desk. Plantronics research shows that most SMB employees feel more productive when working away from the o ce than at the o ce.
With ReachUC, users access the same communications features from their SIP deskphone, mobile app, or desktop environment. Supported features include VoIP, Video, and GSM calling, SMS and text chat, PBX presence and contact management, web conferencing, fax, and push noti cations. e application is available on Apple iOS and Android mobile devices as well as Mac and Windows desktops.
Apple iPhone users bene t from ReachUC support for Apple CallKit, a newly released
API by Apple that gives the ReachUC iOS app
a native look and feel and allows it to responds appropriately to system-level behaviors such as
Do Not Disturb and Answer from Lock Screen. CallKit brings the user experience for iPhone users up to par with Android, which has allowed VoIP apps to access the native dialer for nearly two years.
ReachUC also includes tools that extend PBX features to several popular desktop applications. ese include an extension to make calls from Google Chrome browser pages and a plug-in to place calls, synchronize contacts and send faxes from Microso Outlook.
All features are controlled by resellers from the SkySwitch Dashboard, such that end-users can be granted access to speci c functionality in a way that enables resellers to logically control billing for bundles.
“Previous Skyswitch mobile apps did not provide the complete integrated experience that we feel is required to compete in today’s market,”
To read the rest of this news story pleasevisit: https://wp.me/p2Q636-qxn
the cloud – the hybrid approach to UC&C
RUFFIN
by Phil Ru n
In our previous discussion we found some of the many problems with superimposing voice onto our existing data network. Before we get
into the many manipulations that must be made
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