ip vs copper connected switch

[Jeffmu]

Greetings all,

Kindly your advice requested, currently in our business environment we are migrating to HUAWEI IP phones, yet we have a couple of areas/buildings connected through copper pair.

These buildings are not yet migrated to IP phones, since there is no fiber connected to these HP switches.

I know there is a way to configure the switch in priority for voice VLANS, but I don’t know the exact approach.

Your kind support is appreciated.

[Oliver Wehrli]

Hi,

I cannot give you a fully conclusive answer since the actual implementation steps differ from the switching platform you use. But hopefully this gives you directions.

Though in general it is always about the same - Quality of Service.

What you need to think of is:

• Define a Voice-VLAN where the IP phones are placed in - most of the switches today have such a functionality (certainly in the HP portfolio)
• Use a QoS mechanism to tag the ingbound Voice-VLAN traffic on the switchports. There are several approaches to this such as Class of Service (CoS, search for 802.1p on the internet) or DiffServ Code Point (DSCP).
• Build a QoS policy on the uplinks from these buildings to the rest of your network, which prioritizes marked voice traffic over other traffic types.

Again, the specific implementation varies based on the switching platform, but the idea is always the same. Mark voice traffic to differentiate it over other traffic and build a policy on your bottlneck to prioritize this traffic in case congestion occurs.

Regards

P.S. fiber won't necesssarily solve your issue unless you of course operate at higher speeds than copper today. If your uplink is fully saturated you need to work with QoS to prioritize important traffic over less important types.