Vivinet Assessor helps you determine whether your network is ready to carry voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in its present configuration. Your VoIP Readiness Assessment is a comprehensive evaluation of network devices and links to assess their ability to transmit high-quality VoIP telephone calls. If your assessment indicates that you need to make some adjustments—by increasing bandwidth, for example—Vivinet Assessor helps you project how the changes might affect VoIP call performance.
A VoIP Readiness Assessment comprises five different assessment types. It is a good idea to perform them in the following order:
Network Inventory: Scan your network to discover routers, switches, and links. Devices are queried, and their configuration data is added to the database. For more information, see Section 3.0, Task 1: Performing a Network Inventory.
Configuration Assessment: Analyze the devices in the database to make sure their resources match a set of configuration rules you supply. Any disparities between device configuration and the rules are flagged. For more information, see Section 4.0, Task 2: Assessing Configuration.
Utilization Monitoring: Monitor selected network devices and links to determine their current CPU, memory, and bandwidth utilization, plus other significant metrics. For more information, see Section 5.0, Task 3: Assessing Network Utilization.
Bandwidth Modeling: Compare VoIP usage scenarios to estimate the call capacity of the network links you have been monitoring. For more information, see Section 6.0, Task 4: Modeling Bandwidth.
VoIP Quality Assessment: Determine how well VoIP will perform on your network by measuring simulated VoIP traffic and calculating call quality based on a Mean Opinion Score (MOS). For more information, see Section 7.0, Task 5: Assessing VoIP Quality.
When you finish running each assessment task, you can generate a VoIP Readiness report that compiles results from your Network Inventory, Utilization Monitoring, Bandwidth Modeling, and VoIP Quality Assessment. For more information about reports, see Section 8.0, Generating Reports."