What is voice Vlan and how to configure it?
Voice Vlan is just like any other Vlan created for voice traffic. Although voice traffic can travel without issue in the shared vlan as well, in most organizations, network administrators have a separate Vlan for voice which is a good practice.
Below are the benefits of having a separate voice Vlan
Security – Separate voice Vlan provides additional security to the voice traffic. Today, there is software available that can capture voice traffic and create an MP3 file that can be used by intruders to spy on private or critical conversations so creating a separate vlan will prevent anyone from spying on the critical information.
Congestion – In a high-traffic network, there are higher chances of network congestion in which packet drop is normal and this can affect time-sensitive traffic like voice. Packet drop of voice traffic is highly impactful as there is no use in sending the dropped packet again so having a separate vlan will prevent the congestion for voice traffic.
Bandwidth – In a shared Vlan, we cannot define the dedicated traffic for the voice traffic however, after creating a separate Vlan, we can configure higher speed for the voice traffic so voice packets should not face any delay while traveling in the network.
There are other protocols like QOS that help us to prioritize the voice traffic however; having a separate vlan provides additional benefits to the voice traffic.
How to configure voice vlan
Voice vlan can be configured like any other Vlan. While creating a voice vlan, we can give it a name a voice vlan which helps us to identify it easily.
After creating a vlan, we can assign the ports to that VLAN, and on those ports, we can then attach the voice devices like IP phones, voice servers, etc.
We should also configure the DHCP server which will provide the IP addresses to the IP phones.
In the above image, we have a few voice devices connected to the switch, all these devices are on Vlan 5, and we have connected these devices to the switch ports which are part of Vlan 5.
We can have some free ports that can be used later on when the voice network expands so designing the voice Vlan is also critical.