Take The VoWLAN Challenge

Used with permission from Business Solutions magazine

In vertical markets such as healthcare, retail, and manufacturing, mobility appears to be the main driver behind the adoption of VoWLAN (voice over wireless LAN) technology. Workers in these environments typically spend their entire day within the confines of one building, but their job functions are such that they are not tied down to a desk. For example, in healthcare, nurses spend their day running between patient rooms, nurses' stations, pharmacy lockers, and so on. The same holds true in a warehouse environment or retail store; rarely is a worker standing beside the phone at the exact moment they are needed, making VoWLAN an attractive option. However, this technology still is evolving, and there are issues and challenges that a VAR must be prepared to address.

QoS simply stands for quality of service. The telephony market uses the acronym as a blanket term to describe processes and standards used to ensure overall acceptable call quality. QoS is needed to consistently deliver quality voice over a broad range of operating conditions, including in buildings or areas where a high potential for signal interference exists. Without it, users may experience voice data packet delay or jitter (jitter is the variation in the time between packets arriving), which can lead to speech breakup, intermittent beeps or clicks within the voice transmission, or even dropped calls.