Suggestions for Installation and Configuration

Reliability and Performance

There is a cost/performance trade-off associated with Voice over IP. Greater reliability and improved performance can be obtained through server redundancy and components with higher bandwidth capabilities.

The reliability and performance of the traditional PBX systems are very high to date. Much of the LAN is outside the PBX’s control. However, consider the points in the next paragraph to enhance the reliability and performance of the IP telephone network.

All 4600 Series IP Telephones support the tools “ping” and “traceroute.” These are standard LAN/WAN tools to identify:

• whether two points on a network can communicate with each other, and
• what path a sample communication takes as it traverses the network from one point to the other.

All 4600 Series IP Telephones respond appropriately to a ping or a traceroute message sent from the DEFINITY^� or MultiVantage switch or any other source on your network. These telephones will not, in general, initiate a ping or traceroute. Release 1.6 of the 4600 Series IP Telephones supporting H.323 introduced “remote ping” and “remote traceroute” support. The switch can instruct such a 4600 Series IP Telephone to initiate a ping or a traceroute to a specified IP Address. The telephone carries out that instruction and sends a message to the switch indicating the results. See your DEFINITY^� or MultiVantage Administration documentation for more details.

As of Release 1.8, if applicable, 4600 Series IP Telephones test whether the network Ethernet switch port supports IEEE 802.1D/q tagged frames by ARPing the router with a tagged frame. See VLAN Considerations. If your LAN environment includes Virtual LANs (VLANs), your router must respond to ARPs for VLAN tagging to work properly.