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 What is convergence?
Network convergence is defined as the integration of all traffic types – voice, data and video solutions – onto a single IP network. Multiple data and traffic types are aggregated to coexist seamlessly. Additionally, a converged network must sufficiently handle multiple traffic types while exhibiting different behaviors to deliver consistent quality and reliability for the user. For example, with a real-time Voice over IP (VoIP) application, a converged network must reliably route voice packets with minimum delay, limited jitter and without dropping or losing packets.
Also known as multi-service networking, a converged network can reduce costs for enterprises while providing enhanced functionality and increased flexibility. Benefits of integrating all types of communications include:
- More efficient communication services
- Extended access to corporate resources for mobile workers
- A solid foundation for deploying more sophisticated, integrated and potentially revenue-generating applications
- Increased productivity levels overall
As a result, enterprises that embrace convergence can experience increased profits and grow revenue to gain a competitive advantage.
Convergence deployments have yielded encouraging results in such areas as QoS, application bandwidth management, stability of vendors and their solutions, and return on investment (ROI). Since today’s key solution areas — security, mobility and convergence — are all interdependent, enterprise decision makers should avoid locking into a proprietary architecture or one-dimensional solutions that cannot adapt to all application traffic needs simultaneously.
With the right strategy and an adaptive network architecture, enterprises can confidently and successfully create a powerful, standards-based multi-service network that efficiently handles a variety of traffic types simultaneously. |
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