But it isn't just telecom workers who will need to learn more about QoS to successfully manage SIP trunks, as IT workers could learn more about QoS as it applies to voice. Pete Allan, a network engineer at Bandwidth.com who has a background in both IP and traditional telecom networks, says that IT workers will have to change the way they think about handling voice calls on their networks, since traditional methods of handling other applications won't cut it. Instead, he thinks IT departments have to consider voice to be more like a frequent flier reward.

"If you're a frequent flier on a particular airline then you get to go in front of everybody," he says. "If you don't treat it like that then your call quality will be really degraded ... you can't just throw more bandwidth at it."

Maloff also says that IT workers are going to get used to the idea of implementing real-time sessions without any jitter or delays that would typically be acceptable for most IP-based applications.

"IT guys need to stop thinking in terms of storing forward and need to start thinking in terms of real-time sessions," says Maloff. "Voice is an extremely time-sensitive application and as an engineer I have to make sure that I have sufficient capacity."

in Network World's LANs & Routers section.