I’m doing a presentation at VoiceCon next week in San Francisco’s Moscone Center titled Troubleshooting IP Telephony Networks.
This presentation will be quite a bit different than other similarly titled talks I’ve seen. I’ll be talking about a number of common problems in VoIP networks. Each item is presented with a symptom and a corresponding set of problems that could cause that symptom. Of course, I also provide an idea of what correction needs to be performed.
I wanted to take the above approach, with details about a number of specific problems because other talks I had attended at a variety of seminars were rather vague. The speakers would describe symptoms in general terms and provide similarly vague solutions “You have to monitor X”, without providing enough information to create a solution. I’ve been guilty of it too. For example I’ve told people that they need to monitor QoS queue drops to identify when specific queues are dropping packets and when those packet drops are a problem. But knowing how to setup a system to monitor those queues (it’s not easy) and the meaning of packet drops in specific queues was missing. This may not be a good example because of the complexity of the solution, but it is representative of the hand-waving that occurs in many presentations.
While it is difficult to properly address troubleshooting in a 20-25 minute presentation, there are a number of common problems that can be adequately covered. If this presentation works out, I may plan to do a tutorial session and cover additional scenarios. Starting with a technical session will provide some useful initial feedback and may provide input that the conference organizers need to create a better session for the next conference.
It will be interesting to see how my presentation will be received and whether it provides useful value to people. If you’re attending VoiceCon, please stop by the talk (Wednesday afternoon at 4pm) and let me know what you think of it.
-Terry
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Re-posted with Permission
NetCraftsmen would like to acknowledge Infoblox for their permission to re-post this article which originally appeared in the Applied Infrastructure blog under http://www.infoblox.com/en/communities/blogs.html
