How Best Separate VOICE and DATA

[danmartinnorhrop]

Hello,

I am trying to understand the best and most efficient way to separate Voice and Data on my new network and this is the first time I have worked with Voice on a Cisco Network.  Currently we are planning to route all Data to our main office across a VPN link and all the Voice will route to the VOIP cloud provider so from a high level point of view what will be the best way to network the environment.

As of now I am thinking of creating two VLANS on my layer-2 catalyst switch and using VLAN tagging and obviously using separate networks to separate VOICE and Data.  Then I will either use trunking or Virtual layer-3 routing ports to route out of the network.  I was hoping someone out there could give me some feedback or advice?  Also, I was hoping someone could point me to useful reading material on how to setup VOICE traffic since I understand there is often QOS configuration needed.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

[Jose Solano]

Hi,

 In this case, normally as you mentioned you will create 2 separate vlans, data vlan and the voice vlan. Cisco switches will have the command "switchport voice vlan xx" this command is apply to the phone interfaces and for the data vlan you use the switchport access vlan xx command.

 This will ensure that voice traffic is not mixed with data. Also you need trunks to carry that over and virtual vlan interfaces (SVIs) in order to route traffic out for those networks.

 As per QOS, below you have a link with the best practices and design:

Enterprise QoS Solution Reference Network Design Guide

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/WAN_and_MAN/QoS_SRND/QoS-SRND-Book/QoSIntro.html

Hope this helps!

Leo