Troubleshooting IPT Networks

There was no wrong answer. Each speaker gave a quick answer to the problem and they didn't know that I was going to pose these questions. At the end of the warm-up, I told the audience to visit the website of VoIPTroubleShooter. The first statement reads: "Voice over IP performance is sensitive to both IP network behavior and traditional telephony problems."

Here's my list of answers for the above problems:

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.

There was no wrong answer. Each speaker gave a quick answer to the problem and they didn't know that I was going to pose these questions. At the end of the warm-up, I told the audience to visit the website of VoIPTroubleShooter. The first statement reads: "Voice over IP performance is sensitive to both IP network behavior and traditional telephony problems."

Here's my list of answers for the above problems:

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.

The three guest speakers: Steve Blair, University of Pennsylvania; Fiona Lodge, Prognosis and Terry Slattery, Netcordia each gave presentations on the many aspects of IPT Troubleshooting.

KEY POINTS

Steve Blair

Team Development- UPenn leveraged their voice team by training them, bringing them up to speed on the IP telephones and features and they in turn trained users. Blair built a great team and used brown bag lunch sessions along with two hour intensive training sessions to develop his IPT team.

Old Cabling- if it's ragged or has too many rough edges then abandon it as they did with damaged copper plant and aging coax. Some things aren't worth hanging onto and the idea is you have to know your cable plant- management by walking around and validation.

Communications- it's an old problem, the communicators don't always do a good job of communicating. Blair identified this, acted on it and made improvements. Shop talk doesn't work well, along with all the acronyms coming from both sides.

Fiona Lodge

Too Much Prioritization - yes, it happens and you can't give voice an open purchase order (my words) and then knock out business applications.

Failback Methods - alternative routing, redundancy and how to treat congestion, failed routes and other ailments are valid considerations in your network design pre-cutover.

Unreported User Issues- only get worse and create more problems. The typical voice user will dial three times and when the call fails three times, congestion in the network does get worse. No monitoring in the network? Of course you will find problems you didn't know about but have always had or started having. Depend upon the users to describe all their voice issues? That's a precedent that is changing. Lodge noted that managed monitoring in the enterprise is growing. Maybe an outside viewpoint is better. (my comment)

Terry Slattery

DSP Pools - DSPs do crash and not having available DSP resources will cause problems.

Manual Methods Don't Scale - network monitoring and management pay for themselves.

DHCP Address Overload- for central locations use multi-day lease and for local locations use short address leases.

IPT troubleshooting does mean you must learn both worlds. The old issues blend with the new and it does get complicated. I asked after the session, "are self-healing networks ever on the horizon?" All three explained to me that this is way too complex and that it's far better to engage the human element.