Details of VOIP and Video Conferencing

Sorry you've had to wait 5 days for a response. Cisco IP phones are some of the most used VOIP phones in offices today. We have over 300 of them in our office in New York. It utilizes Internet bandwidth to make and receive phone calls. Configuration steps would include connecting an ethernet cable from the IP phone's WAN port to the switch/router you have at the location. The cisco IP phones are great, they provide an immense amount of features, and they use a great protocol called "Skinny" which makes life easy in terms of setup.

Troubleshooting these phones are very simple, it's either a network issue or the phone doesn't know what SIP server to connect to. It's a catch 22 with voip and security. There are different types of voip security, but that's all up to your voip provider. You need a firewall at your office location for basic Internet security, but at the same time those firewalls have the ability to block voip traffic in a few different ways. If you have a good IT person, they will be able to work through that.

Every voip company is a little different, if you have questions on how to configure your router to optimize your voip devices, talk to your voip provider about what ports you need to unblock, and what traffic should be optimized.