Why Scaling VoIP Across Locations Is Harder Than It Looks
VoIP is an effective alternative to traditional landlines for facilitating flexible communication between businesses. Although it offers cost-saving solutions, rolling it out to multiple offices can be very complicated.
Network infrastructure
Ensuring that premium sound across distance requires a strong enough bandwidth, low latency, and minimal packet loss. Furthermore, implementing Quality of Service (QoS) across varied networks to prioritise networks is integral but challenging.
Design & Management
A distributed architecture, with balancing and redundancy, is essential for reliability. Managing secure connections with VPNs and ensuring continuity across all sites is a significant challenge.
Security & Compliance
With more locations, there is a larger surface area for cyber threats and compliance with privacy laws. Furthermore, unlike traditional landlines, VoIP systems don’t automatically provide the caller’s physical location. This means that emergency services won’t be able to accurately locate a correct physical address for dispatch.
Integration & Compliance
The new VoIP system being installed needs to be compatible with the existing IT infrastructure and be compatible with various hardware across different sites.
Dial Plans & Routing
Making a clear and unified dial plan for multiple locations and implementing least-cost routing (LCR) adds significant routing complexity.
Staffing & Training
User adoption requires in-depth training, and handling a multi-location VoIP system demands specialised IT expertise, often requiring centralised management.
Fuse 2 has assisted business clients in implementing secure, scalable VoIP to multiple global offices without sacrificing uptime or performance. We have a dedicated team of experts who are available 24/7 and are committed to diagnosing and resolving issues before, during or after installation.
Start with a Network Audit
VoIP systems are extremely sensitive to network complications such as jitter, latency and packet loss. Many existing networks, often built for best-effort data transfer without robust (QoS) mechanisms, are simply not optimised to meet these strict requirements, leading to a poor user experience for VoIP calls.
Ensuring that a robust VoIP experience is provided will require several key aspects for optimisation.
- Bandwidth evaluation
- Router/Firewall Capabilities
- QoS Policies
- MPLS/SD-WAN readiness
- MPLS
- SD-WAN
Choose the Right VoIP Architecture
Centralised
Pros
- Easier to Manage
- Cost-Effective
- Stronger Security
- Consistent Features
- Better Call Quality Control
Cons
- Single point of failure
- Network Reliance
- Distance Problems
- Big Target for Hackers
- Complex Setup
Decentralised
Pros
- More reliable
- Better for Spread-Out Teams
- Easy to Grow and Flexible
- Often Cheaper Upfront
Cons
- Potentially Complex to manage
- Can be expensive
- Still needs internet
- Less control
- Emergency calls can be tricky
Hybrid
Pros
- Focus on immediate survival
- Easy Management
- Smarter Phone Line Use
- Graceful Degradation
Cons
- Increased Complexity
- High Initial Cost
- Limited Features During Outage
- Still Needs Good Internet
Use a Session Border Controller (SBC) for Each Edge
A Session Border Controller (SBC) is a necessary network device for VoIP, acting as a dedicated guard for your internet-based phone calls (SIP traffic) at the edge of your network. An SBC:
Navigates Firewalls
It guides your phone through your network’s firewall and handles complex Network Address Translation (NAT), ensuring calls connect properly without security compromises.
Ensures Compatibility
Different phones and systems use various audio “codecs.” An SBC ensures seamless communication by negotiating and translating between these codecs.
Boosts Security
SBCs are a vital defence line. All call traffic is carefully examined by them, and hostile assaults (such as denial-of-service or toll fraud attempts) are actively blocked. Additionally, any poorly formed data packets that can interfere with your service are filtered out.
Connects Offices Securely
An SBC serves as a trusted gateway for seamless inter-office calling for companies with different locations by facilitating safe and dependable connections across their disparate VoIP systems.
Managed SBCs are highly advised for companies without dedicated SIP experts. This ensures that your VoIP system operates safely and effectively without putting a strain on your internal IT staff by enabling professional suppliers to handle the intricate setup and continuing monitoring.
It’s important to note that Fuse 2 includes SBC deployment as standard for multi-site clients, streamlining secure and reliable inter-office communication from day one.
Implement Quality of Service (QoS) from Day One
SBCs are crucial for multi-site VoIP setups, acting as an intelligent and secure gateway for all voice communications between your different locations and the outside world.
Managing complicated SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) traffic, the signalling foundation of VoIP, is their main responsibility. Every office in a multi-site setting frequently runs on a separate network that is firewall-protected. SBCs are necessary for managing NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal, which enables voice packets to flow across office networks or between your private networks and the public internet without revealing your internal infrastructure.
SBCs are essential for normalising SIP communications in addition to providing a basic connection. There may be subtle variations in how SIP is implemented by various PBX systems or VoIP services. By serving as a translator, an SBC makes sure that all of these variants can communicate perfectly. In order to ensure that various phone systems and devices can agree on a common audio format for conversations that are clear and intelligible, they also oversee codec negotiation.
SBCs are a powerful security layer, which is important. They actively defend your internal phone systems from threats, including denial-of-service assaults, toll fraud, and eavesdropping, as well as malicious packets and SIP-based attacks.
In a multi-site system, businesses usually encounter annoying problems such as one-way audio, repeated call failures, or serious security flaws in the absence of an SBC. Call routing between offices and interfacing with many external systems exacerbate these issues. Call quality may be significantly lowered by even small network flaws, such as a 10 ms jitter (variation in packet arrival time), which can make business talks seem choppy or confused.
Choosing managed SBCs ensures reliable and secure multi-site communication without requiring specialised in-house SIP technical experience, further simplifying implementation and drastically lowering enterprises’ ongoing IT expense.
Plan for Redundancy & Failover
A strong enough failover strategy at the entry level is more important than anything else for modern business communication. Downtime, even in a single branch office, can disrupt operations extremely, impacting customer service, sales, and internal productivity.
Firstly, local internet failover at branch sites is crucial. Relying on a single internet connection creates a significant single point of failure. Applying a backup connection ensures your VoIP phones remain online even if the primary link goes down, preserving communication for that location.
Secondly, SIP trunk redundancy with automatic rerouting is critical. The conduits for your calls are your SIP trunks. If one trunk or carrier experiences an issue, automatic re-routing to an alternative, pre-configured trunk ensures that calls proceed without manual intervention.
Thirdly, larger-scale disasters are prevented via geo-redundancy across data centres. A regional outage (such as a power grid collapse or natural disaster) at one site won’t take down your complete communication system if your VoIP infrastructure is replicated across geographically distinct data centres. The healthy data centre may be automatically selected by traffic.
Finally, failover for inbound DDI (Direct Dial In) traffic ensures that the correct recipient always receives incoming calls. If a primary path for a DDI number fails, the system must automatically divert calls to an alternate route or location, thereby preventing lost business or frustrated customers.
Fusae 2 provides active-active SIP infrastructure with automatic failover and real-time health monitoring. This advanced setup ensures consistent service, even during surprise disruptions, proving invaluable for maintaining seamless operations.
Standardise Devices & Provisioning Across Sites
Standardising hardware such as VoIP phones, softphones and headsets with their provisioning methods significantly improves long-term support and user experience.
Centralised Firmware Management
With centralised firmware management, updates can be deployed to all devices simultaneously, which eliminates “model mismatches across offices”, this ensures that everyone benefits from the latest features and security. This speeds up issue resolution, reduces complexity, and streamlines inventory and procurement.
Zero-touch provisioning
Standardisation means a smooth and consistent experience. Everyone has access to the same interface and features, regardless of their location. Zero-touch provisioning plays a massive part here; users simply plug in their new phone, which configures itself automatically. This helps cut down on time and complications, it helps improve productivity. Furthermore, high-grade hardware also ensures seamless calls and continuous performance, minimising technical glitches.
Secure provisioning
It’s crucial that provisioning is secure. HTTPS (not TFTP) encrypts sensitive configuration data and firmware, safeguarding against eavesdropping and interference. Unsecured methods leave your organisation at risk.
Fuse 2 fully understands these benefits and offers fully managed provisioning tools for enterprise customers. This gives businesses the advantage of reaping the rewards of standardisation and automation without the heavy lifting, leading to a high-quality, user-friendly communication system.
Integrate Security Into Every Layer
Adding new locations to an enterprise network will inherently increase the surface area for attacks. Each new branch, office or user device represents another potential entry point for malicious attackers, which means that securing your VoIP system is a crucial necessity. These potential threats can be extremely impactful, especially financially.
SIP-based toll fraud is when attackers gain unauthorised access to a VoIP system to make expensive outbound calls and rack up extravagant bills in a small space of time. A further threat is called registration hijacking, which is when an attacker impersonates an authorised VoIP phone or user to intercept calls, eavesdrop or initiate calls under false pretences, exposing sensitive data. These threats are serious, legitimate dangers that can lead to severe financial losses and reputational damage.
High-grade security measures need to be made and implemented at every layer, starting at the perimeter and extending inward to the core infrastructure and endpoints. This includes using firewalls, strict access controls and continuous monitoring.
Fuse 2 is knowledgeable and equipped to prevent these threats by implementing comprehensive security measures as standard. Our offerings include proactive fraud monitoring, which uses detailed analytics to detect abnormal patterns that indicate toll fraud. The deployment of SBC firewalls at the network edge acts as a crucial line of defence, inspecting and securing SIP traffic by hiding internal network topology, and preventing various VoIP-specific attacks. Lastly, providing secure SIP trunks ensures that the communication paths themselves are encrypted and authenticated, protecting sensitive voice traffic from threats. This multi-layered security strategy is essential to safeguard enterprise VoIP systems from the growing landscape of cyber threats.
Enable Monitoring & Analytics Across All Locations
Although uptime is extremely important, the best visual measurement for success is quality, trends and anomalies. These are all vital to maintain a high-performing and reliable communication system.
Quality monitoring
This involves assessing metrics such as jitter, latency and packet loss, which all have a direct impact on call clarity and user experience. Although the system might be up and running, calls might be continuously breaking up or delayed, meaning that it’s not exactly functional. However, by tracking these quality metrics, organisations can proactively recognise and find solutions to these underlying network issues before they get out of control.
Identifying trends
This means analysing historical data to help recognise patterns and changes over time. This goes beyond real-time alerts to get an understanding of the long-term health and evolution of your systems. This is crucial because this will allow you to spot problems before they cause an issue.
Detecting anomalies
This focuses on identifying any unusual or unexpected deviations from typical patterns. As opposed to traditional threshold alerts, which trigger as soon as a metric crosses a fixed value, anomalies can be subtle, complicated or multifaceted, normally needing advanced analytical techniques. This is key because it helps prevent disasters like security breaches or unexpected errors before they escalate and become serious threats to the business.
Fuse 2 understands these complexities and solutions and provides clients with a powerful dashboard. The dashboard offers complete visibility into both network and SIP performance across every site, allowing businesses to gain a deep understanding of their entire communication infrastructure, proactively identify issues, and ensure seamless operations.
Train Local Admins & End Users
A lot of VoIP issues don’t derive from inherent limitations in technology but rather from invalid practices or an absence of troubleshooting knowledge. Straightforward misconfigurations, network congestion due to incorrect bandwidth allocation.
Choose the Right VoIP Provider
Choosing a VoIP provider isn’t just about making calls, it’s about finding a solution that fits seamlessly into how you work. We don’t just offer industry-leading VoIP services, we help you stay ahead of the curve by innovating useful systems that are efficient for you and your business.
That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest integration, 3CX is now fully integrated with REX CRM.
This means users can now call clients directly from within the CRM platform, simplifying workflows, saving time, and creating a better user experience across your business.
