Cisco Systems 416 manual Understanding QoS for IP Telephony, C H A P T E R

C H A P T E R 7

Provisioning: Configuring QoS for IP Telephony

In an Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data (AVVID) network, you must configure QoS for IP telephony to ensure voice quality.

The following topics provide information about the need for configuring QoS in an IP telephony environment and the tools that enable you to do this.

•Understanding QoS for IP Telephony, page 7-1

•Using QPM to Configure QoS for IP Telephony, page 7-3

•Configuring QoS Using the IP Telephony Wizard, page 7-4

•Modifying Voice Policies, page 7-17

•Viewing the Voice Ready Report, page 7-18

•Advanced IP Telephony Network Configuration, page 7-19

Understanding QoS for IP Telephony

Real-time based applications in a network, such as voice applications, have different characteristics and requirements than those of data applications. Voice applications tolerate minimal variation in the amount of delay affecting delivery of their voice packets.

Voice traffic is also intolerant of packet loss and jitter, both of which degrade the quality of the voice transmission delivered to the recipient end user. To effectively transport voice traffic over IP, mechanisms are required that ensure reliable delivery of packets with low latency.

In an enterprise environment, network congestion can occur at any time in any portion of the network campus, branch office, or WAN. For successful deployment of IP telephony, you must ensure end-to-end network quality for voice traffic.

To ensure voice quality, you must use QoS in all areas of the enterprise network. To make a proper QoS configuration, you must first identify the points where QoS is a concern, then choose the appropriate QoS tools to use, and deploy to the devices in the network.

User Guide for CiscoWorks QoS Policy Manager 4.1.6

OL-23444-01 7-1