Voice Networks
Credit union finds network echo
Analysis of voice, data, network and
application-performance functions clears
problem.
Although the teams suspected the
anomaly was the responsibility of one of
their service provider partners, they could
not prove it.
For nearly 70 years, the lines of
communication between the North Island
Credit Union in San Diego County, Calif.,
and its customers remained clear. In 2006,
however, the staff of the locally owned
financial cooperative began noticing a
troubling echo in communications between
employees and members. The inconsistent
nature of the problem, combined with the
limited capabilities of the legacy
performance-management solution, kept the
network and telecom team, as well as a
consulting team, from pinpointing the source
of the trouble.
North Island employs nearly 500 staff
members, with approximately 200 people based
at the corporate headquarters in San Diego,
and another 250 staff in 17 branch offices
and a full-service contact center. To remain
the financial institution of choice for
current and prospective members requires a
robust behind-the-scenes back office
infrastructure, so North Island has data
centers in Chula Vista and Irvine, as well
as an emergency operations center in San
Diego County.
A converged voice and data wide area
network (WAN) comprised of Cisco routers,
switches and call managers support
multiprotocol label switching, Frame Relay,
DS-3 and T-1 protocols and connections,
along with a myriad of commercial
off-the-shelf and custom applications.
Responsibility for the network and
applications falls to the network and
telecom department, part of North Island’s
information technology organization.
The department’s team of 11 consists of
four groups that focus on security, database
management, Windows applications management,
and voice and data network management. To
help them plan, design, implement and
operate the infrastructure to meet
functional requirements and optimize current
and future performance, the team has worked
closely for several years with Nexus IS, a
California-based Cisco Gold Certified
Partner.
Although the North Island and Nexus IS
teams suspected the anomaly was the
responsibility of one of their service
provider partners, they could not prove this
hypothesis. Furthermore, the service
providers denied being the source of the
problem. Even after implementing
functionality to tag and log calls when
participants reported echoing, the teams
still did not have the information they
needed to resolve the problem or pinpoint
the cause.
North Island’s homogeneous Cisco network
infrastructure supports not only data
communications over the WAN, but also all
voice communications through voice over
Internet protocol (VoIP) technology.
According to Dante Chavez, North Island’s
vice president of network and telecom
services, "By the fall of 2007, we had
reached the end of our rope. It was clear
that the combination of CiscoWorks, freeware
and our own custom applications development
was unlikely to ever produce the desired
results, and we could no longer afford to
consume valuable resources and jeopardize
member loyalty. We concluded that an
entirely new approach was in order."
Chavez made the decision to implement
Fluke Networks’ Visual UpTime management
system because it offered analysis of voice,
data, network and application performance,
which could solve the credit union’s
voice-echoing problem. The solution was
operational within a day and North Island
and Nexus IS teams were quickly able to
pinpoint exact periods of time in which the
voice echoing was occurring and why.
The Visual UpTime system allowed North
Island’s network and telecom team to see
that the echoing was not a result of the
firm’s wide area network. Rather, the team
was able to identify that the signals being
sent from their phone provider were
overdriving the ports. The voice compression
had been configured for the highest quality
and, as a result, was taking up a lot of
bandwidth, causing a strain on the converged
network that had to handle simultaneous
voice and data traffic.
"The breadth and depth of the solution’s
functionality, including modules dedicated
to VoIP network performance and the ability
to go back in time to examine intermittent
problems, showed us what was really
happening on our network," according to
Chavez. "Within a week, we were able to
prove that our WAN was not the source of the
echoing. Because our service provider
partners were Visual UpTime users
themselves, they acknowledged the
credibility and validity of the information
we presented, and they understood they had
to take corrective action to eliminate the
anomaly."
With the new level of analysis, the
voice-echoing problem was resolved by North
Island working with its service provider to
adjust parameters of the port coming into
the credit union’s communications gateway.
The voice-quality setting was also lowered
to free more bandwidth across the network,
while still offering clear, consistent
calls.
"If something is performing slowly,
usually people just try to add bandwidth to
fix the problem," says Chavez. "However, by
utilizing Visual UpTime, we were able to
save a significant amount of money, because
the cost of implementing the product was a
modest, one-time charge as opposed to the
large, ongoing cost of purchasing additional
bandwidth."
Based on Visual UpTime’s demonstrated
value and clear ROI, the team is currently
in the process of deploying T-1 and Ethernet
analysis service elements (ASEs) to all 17
branch sites to optimize WAN/LAN and
applications performance throughout the
entire converged voice and data enterprise.
"We’ve needed a performance-management
solution like this for years," Chavez says.
"Once we saw Visual UpTime in action, we
wanted to deploy more as quickly as
possible."
North Island is planning to move to a new
corporate headquarters and expects to open
nearly 10 additional branches. Such an
expansion requires an enhanced voice and
data network and applications
infrastructure. Looking forward into future
business plans, Chavez says, "Visual UpTime
will permit us to strategically plan for the
resources and budget we need to efficiently
and effectively accommodate our anticipated
growth, so our employees will be able to
maintain our award-winning tradition of
outstanding member service."
For more information
(click here)