By adding voice-over-IP (VoIP) capabilities to their wireless networks, organizations can further improve collaboration and responsiveness, and realize new cost savings.

To meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce, organizations are seeking mobility solutions that can help them:

• Resolve business problems in real time
• Increase responsiveness by providing access to business resources and enterprise applications
• Provide easier access to voicemail and messaging with convenient and streamlined communications
• Reduce IT, wireline voice, paging, and cellular costs

The Cisco Unified Wireless Network brings the mobility and flexibility of wireless networking to voice communications systems.

Voice Support

The Cisco Unified Wireless Network delivers the proven cost savings, productivity tools, and manageability of the Cisco Unified Communications System to the mobile workforce.

The Cisco Unified Wireless Network is a voice-ready WLAN that delivers important features such as quality of service (QoS), fast secure roaming, and centralized RF planning and optimization tools for voice. The voice-ready network has five primary components:

• Access Points: Secure, manageable, and reliable wireless connectivity with exceptional range and performance, as well as integrated RF management. These access points are optimized to better handle the quick delivery of relatively short voice packets while minimizing retries to ensure a reliable and highly available network for mobile voice communications.
• Wireless Control System (WCS): Award-winning wireless network management system enables you to monitor and control voice-critical parameters such as delay, jitter, and roam time performance measurements to ensure a stable and reliable RF network to carry voice traffic.
• Cisco Compatible Extension Clients: Innovations and industry-standard features enable a diverse set of voice clients to simply and securely connect to the Cisco Unified Wireless Network.
• Network Unification: Cisco wireless LAN controllers are delivered on an extensive range of integrated and standalone platforms, helping to ensure scalability as wireless network coverage extends throughout the campus to support voice clients.
• Mobility Services: In addition to voice, the Cisco Unified Wireless Network can provide security, location, and guest access solution services.

Voice-Ready Network Architecture

The Cisco Unified Wireless Network and the Unified Communications system work together to provide reliable, manageable connectivity.

The Cisco Compatible Extensions Program enables third-party device manufacturers to develop a diverse set of end-user devices that are interoperable, securely connect to the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, and take advantage of all Cisco i nnovations and industry-standard features, such as:

• QoS: QoS is vital to enabling reliable, toll-quality voice communications. Cisco wireless access points include support for Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM), which is based on the IEEE 802.11e WLAN standard to support priority tagging and queuing to ensure intelligent handling of voice communications.
• Client Device Support: The Cisco Unified Wireless Network is designed to support devices optimized for specific applications as well as general-purpose voice enabled devices. The Cisco Compatible Extensions program helps a wide variety of clients to simply and securely interoperate with Cisco's wireless infrastructure.
• Cisco Fast Secure Roaming: Efficient roaming is critical for voice applications, which are unforgiving of any delays caused by the need to reauthenticate clients to preserve security.
• PowerSave: This feature determines and dynamically adjusts the number of clients and their optimum transmit power associated with a cell and adjacent access points to increase overall performance and improve WLAN client device battery life.

The Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7921G gives customers more flexibility in selection of end-user devices, including third-party devices.

The Cisco Unified Wireless Network can be designed and deployed using Cisco Services to advantage of Cisco know-how, specialized wireless and unified communications partners, detailed deployment guides, and voice optimization planning tools.

Industry Benefits

The Cisco Unified Wireless Network helps companies across industries take full advantage of their existing IP network to securely and cost-effectively deliver converged voice, video, and data applications to the entire workforce, independent of location.

• Manufacturing: Plant and warehouse workers can add a voice feature that reduces the need to search for land-line phones or the need to carry and pay for more than one terminal, thereby increasing communications efficiency and reducing cost.
• Retail: Salespeople can communicate with inventory staff members to check product pricing and availability without leaving the customer, which increases effective communications and customer responsiveness.
• Enterprise Office: Employees can use voice-over-wireless LAN to maintain access to all the call management and messaging features of their desktop phones as they move around in buildings, thus increasing opportunities for collaboration and making them truly mobile within the work environment.
• Hospitality: The immediacy and intelligence of wireless VoIP allows hotels, convention centers, entertainment complexes, cruise ships, and other destinations to be more responsive to guest needs.
• Education: More engaging and effective interaction between faculty, staff, students, and administrators creates a more collaborative learning environment.