Voice over IP in the German Research Network: Challenges and Solutions

The goal of this paper is to provide some feedback on a VoIP project in the German research network. During the last couple of years we build up and managed an unusual large testbed for VoIP applications in Germany. Several universities, research institutes, and companies tied together to allow a common usage to different local VoIP installations. The primary goal of the tests was to identify problems emerging in such large installations. We evaluated the quality of service requirements of VoIP transmissions as well as to examine the interoperability of different VoIP components. Additionally, as a very main part of the investigations, the call routing possibilities were tested including redundancy options. This resulted in a reconfiguration of the whole VoIP network several times. A short discussion on current security questions around the voice over IP employment is rounding up the paper.