Assessing and Redesigning Enterprise Networks through NS-2 to Support VoIP

In the recent past, Voice over IP (VoIP) deployments over data networks are gaining popularity due to the massive growth in the broadband internet access. Successful deployment of these applications depends directly on the performance of the underlying data network. Based on this and the fact that today's data networks are operated to perform many significant applications, network administrators seek out a way to measure the impact of these applications on the existing network performance before deploying them. Occasionally, network redesign is necessity; considering redesign's alterations should preserve most of the existing network characteristics to reduce overall impact of deploying new applications in the network performance. In this paper, we evaluated readiness of the existing enterprise network through NS-2 to support VoIP and based on findings a solution for redesigning the enterprise network is proposed to enhance the new network performance and leaving sufficient capacity for future growth. We applied our approach on a medium size enterprise network as a case study, the results prove improvements in network performance after redesigning the existing enterprise network.