Installation guide

Overview Network Requirements and Preparation
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ShoreTel 14.2 Planning and Installation Guide 45
Overview
The ShoreTel system is an IP-based voice solution deployed across your IP network. This allows the
components of the system to be located anywhere on your IP network, resulting in a single system for
all your voice applications at all locations. This single system approach significantly reduces the
complexity associated with legacy systems that consist of multiple PBXs, multiple voice mail systems,
multiple auto-attendants, and multiple automatic call distribution systems, each with their unique
management interfaces.
Because the ShoreTel system becomes another application on your IP network, it is important to
understand how the system integrates with your data network. As you migrate your network to include
voice as another application across your wide area network, it becomes necessary for your IP LAN
and WAN to provide a network that meets the requirements for toll-quality voice. The ability of your
network to deliver this performance will vary based on the number of simultaneous calls between
locations, the voice quality required, and the other application traffic on the network. Some of the key
considerations are:
 Bandwidth
 Latency
 Jitter
 Quality of service
Understanding the Network Requirements for Toll-
Quality Voice
The ShoreTel system is designed to deliver the highest possible voice quality. To ensure high quality
voice transmissions, you must be sure that the entire network on which you deploy the ShoreTel
telephony system is able to provide toll-quality voice communications throughout. Both LAN and WAN
links must be adequately constructed to ensure the fluid transmission of time- and order-sensitive
voice packets.
This section provides you with the background to understand the factors involved in engineering an IP
network that is ready for voice communications.
General Network Requirements
When your voice traffic travels across your IP network, you must ensure that your network does all of
the following:
 Delivers enough bandwidth
 Meets the latency and jitter requirements
 Meets the packet loss requirements for toll-quality voice
You also need to prioritize your voice traffic over your data traffic and configure the ShoreTel system’s
Admission Control feature.