Voice Over WLAN

Evaluation Particulars

What did we consider appropriate for this review?

We considered products oriented toward delivery of enterprise-class voice telephony services using handheld devices over standards-based Wi-Fi 802.11 wireless LANs. We also considered both hardware and software phone systems, but any soft phones would have to run on a true handheld computing device. Soft phones running on Windows-based notebook computers weren't considered for our review.

Products were judged based on the following criteria:

Our tests evaluated the suitability of products for a range of enterprise applications. Depending on the mix of products submitted for testing, we chose to evaluate the hardware- and software-based solutions separately.

Product Requirements

Our focus in this review was on handheld telephony products that leverage an existing Wi-Fi wireless LAN infrastructure or help to justify the installation of such an infrastructure. Infrastructure products or related technologies that enhance a VoWLAN (Voice over Wireless LAN ) environment were discounted.

All products were tested in both a controlled lab environment, using infrastructure from several different WLAN vendors wherever appropriate, as well as on a production Wi-Fi 802.11b network built using Cisco Aironet 350 and 1200 Access Points.

The Syracuse University Real World Labs use Verizon's Centrex for voice services. The lab does not have its own production PBX, though it has two Nortel Meridian PBXs that can be configured for use with vendor systems.