Introduction Network Assessment Goals Positioning Phase 1 – Discovery Phase 2 – Modelling Phase 3 – Traffic Simulation Phase 4 – Recommendations Recap

Network Impact How does real-time communication (RTC) affect your network?

How does your network affect real-time communication User Experience Network as a foundation of success.

Lync deployments can fail because of network issues.

The technology is only as good as the last call.

Proactive What are your plans for voice and video?

Is your network ready for RTC/UC? Have you considered RTC/UC when planning and building your network?

What are your expectations on usage?

Reactive Is your customer having quality issues?

Network Assessment is an offering that provides an application-centric evaluation to pinpoint problems that could affect your future Microsoft Unified Communications solution.

Discovery session Understand what network environment exists Usage modeling Model proposed bandwidth usage with user profiles and usage patterns Traffic simulation Use a UC traffic simulator to apply real traffic to a production network and monitor factors that affect traffic quality, such as delay, jitter, and packet loss Recommendations Analyze factors that affect quality and produce a full report with recommendations

Proactive approach Early discovery Assess readiness Layer 7 analysis Recommendations on Lync deployment Measure actual performance

Validates an enterprise’s readiness for real-time communications (RTC) Provides a quantitative assessment of current infrastructure metrics that affect RTC Reduces deployment risk Highlights areas that might have an impact on RTC readiness Protects customer’s investment in RTC Promotes the best possible user experience

Should be part of every Enterprise Voice deployment A large percentage of voice support calls are related to network impairments Can be conducted when: Lync is introduced New workloads are introduced New user populations are enabled for Lync QoS is being introduced/adopted

Discover equipment Upgrade network Configure network Evaluate configuration Troubleshoot network issues Validate existing concerns

Poor UC user experience Increased number of help desk tickets Frustration and poor perception of the product’s ability Saturated networks can affect other line of business (LOB) applications Poor return on UC investment Reduced productivity and collaboration

Discovery objective Come up with data that can be used to depict the factual state of the network.

Discovery goals Uncover current or future potential sources of network impairments.

Confirm simulation probe placement choice.

Ensure information is collected for calibration of usage models.

Understand the customer’s network Collect data for proper scoping and scaling Help build a usage model for the customer Identify risk elements that could affect Lync deployment Eliminate last minute surprises, identify overlooked areas Bring different groups together, probably for the first time (Networking, Lync Voice)

Network overview Site details WAN tech and link speeds LAN/Wi-Fi tech in the enterprise Quality of Service strategies PSTN setups Existing SLAs on WAN Historical metrics Usage profiles Application sharing Conferencing in the enterprise RTC applications (IM/presence/voice/video) Legacy voice architecture PSTN usage

Network Assessment

Discovery phase... information collection

Network Assessment

QoS policies Network topology Network utilization kevels Regional WAN bottlenecks Firewall architecture Is QoS in place?

If so, what type of QoS? Is there WAN QoS? Are there WAN SLAs? Max percentage of links that can be reserved for UC traffic? How many sites do you have? Describe Layer 2 and Layer 3 resiliency. Do you log current utilization levels? Are there multiple WAN providers? Regional bottlenecks?

Discuss your firewall architecture – for example, internal and external firewalls.

Objective: Provide data on usage patterns and bandwidth consumption (average and peak busy hour, RTC usage) of various links over a period of time.

Potential risk: Not knowing the utilization metrics could potentially overload the links, causing serious congestion and drops.

Basic tasks Define sites Define WAN link bandwidth for each site Define bandwidth available for RTC traffic Define Internet link bandwidth (for central sites) Create/update personas Define number of users per site Analyze results

Download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en us/download/details.aspx?id=19011 Lync bandwidth calculator consists two documents: Excel sheet. The calculator tool, valid for Lync 2010 and Lync 2013.

User guide. Word document that explains how to use the tool.

Simulate real traffic to anticipate real network issues prior to the deployment of Lync.

Simulate traffic for an extended period of time—1 week is a good RTC/UC starting point.

Simulation should happen under normal network load.

Simulate Lync traffic flows, P2P, conferencing, PSTN, and so on.

Only under stress will the network reveal how it actually operates.

Without congestion there’s no buffering, so no jitter and no packet loss.

Essentially, we need to simulate Lync traffic because no real Lync traffic exists yet in the network !

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For 1 week, 24 hours a day Need to have enough data for analysis because ”things may be happening, but not that often.” Need to see if there are any patterns.

It’s just Lync-like traffic, but it is real and there can be a lot of it Can harm the network! QoS settings (Differentiated Services Code Point, or DSCP) may be applied Should be discussed with the customer.

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Guidance on where to upgrade WAN links if needed Guidance on where to improve network with respect to: Latency Jitter Packet loss Provide input into the Lync design process Limit number of concurrent calls Limit workloads (for example, audio only) Deploy localized infrastructure

Customer assumed QoS on all Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) links Network assessment revealed MPLS provider dropped QoS markings on specific MPLS links 20% not able to send QoS markings One site not able to send or receive QoS markings Priority queue was never used because of QoS misconfiguration One-way QoS provided inconsistent user experience

Discovery session Understand what network environment exists Usage modeling Model proposed bandwidth usage with user profiles and usage patterns Traffic simulation Use a UC traffic simulator to apply real traffic to a production network and monitor factors that affect traffic quality, such as delay, jitter, and packet loss Recommendations Analyze factors that affect quality and produce a full report with recommendations

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