Overcoming VoWLAN Challenges
By Alcatel-Lucent
Published 2007, Posted August 2008

Abstract:

A few years ago, Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) appeared to be just another overhyped wireless technology that never lived up to analyst expectations. True, it found a welcome reception in vertical segments like retail and healthcare, but it failed to make much of an impression on corporations and consumers.

A few years later, and VoWLAN is poised to start living up to its original promise. Vendors have beefed up the feature sets of their solutions. They’re also addressing enterprise-class issues, like end-to-end quality of service and fast roaming, which lets end-users carry on conversations while they’re on the move, without having to deal with degraded voice quality or dropped sessions.

At the same time, the IEEE is hard at work on a slew of VoWLAN standards - and vendors are adopting them as they’re ratified. These new and emerging standards address everything from access control and call handoff to security and QoS.

Equally important, market projections this time around are based on steadily climbing sales and revenues that are already doubling from year to year.

An enhanced and extended technology; a series of business-class specs and standards; and market activity on a slow boil: It’s time for IT professionals to start taking VoWLAN seriously.

This white paper will help them do exactly that - and more. It investigates the numerous complex challenges facing medium/large enterprises, that must be overcome to achieve a successful VoWLAN deployment. And there’s no shortage of concerns and considerations. Essentially, VoWLAN runs voice over a wireless network that was built to carry data, which is far more forgiving of latency, jitter, retransmissions, dropped packets and a host of other conditions - any one of which can wreak havoc with voice transmissions.

There are no easy answers to these problems, but IT professionals that understand the issues fully won’t be surprised or defenseless if and when they crop up.

This white paper thoroughly investigates VoWLAN challenges, starting with coverage requirements and site surveys and wrapping up with a review of alternative architectures.