Small and large businesses use Freezvon VoIP telephony to conduct corporate communications with clients and teams. The company needs to have high-speed Internet to achieve high quality VoIP connection. In some cases, companies use virtual local area networks (VoIP VLAN) and use VLAN tags to prioritize voice traffic on the router.
What is a voice VLAN for?
Since VoIP technology transmits voice to the same network where text, graphics, and other media content are already located, some companies prefer to set up a separate virtual local area network (VLAN) for VoIP traffic. This segmentation provides certain advantages.
- Improved performance. Users can prioritize voice traffic for better sound quality during calls when connecting VoIP devices to Voice VLAN.
- Enhanced network security. If someone is trying to intercept VoIP traffic, then having a VLAN connection will make it easier to detect the intruder.
- Faster troubleshooting. A company can have multiple routers and switches, but it’s better for each one to handle only one type of data. This will make traffic flows more predictable. The technical administrator will be able to identify and fix vulnerabilities before problems in communication with customers appear.
How do Voice VLANs work?
The prioritized data has to be identified for the network switch to determine it. Thus, the Voice VLAN evaluates which VLAN tag is being used.
When voice traffic comes from the IP phone to the Ethernet switch, the information from the Voice VLAN is added to it and sent back to the phone. Then it’s possible to resend the data and the switch determines which tag is set and gives the voice packet priority.
How to set up a VLAN as a router for VoIP?
The use of virtual telephony allows you to involve different devices for calls. These can be computers with SIP software installed or IP phones.
Let’s suppose that you are connecting an IP phone to a corporate network router. In this case, you should check VLAN settings in the router management interface.
There are the following VLAN configuration steps in the router:
- Find VLAN configurations in advanced settings.
- Activate Enable Bridge Group. This option ensures that data packets sent from the VoIP device to the router are not processed through NAT.
- Select the port number for the IP phone that is connected to the router via an Ethernet or Wi-Fi cable. Apply properties.
- Enable VLAN tagging for the created group. Generate a VLAN identifier to do this, select the required port, and set the priority to high.
As a result, the VoIP traffic will be given the highest priority even despite the congestion of the network.
