Intel VoIP over WLAN architecture

The last few years have seen rapid growth in the evolution of two technologies: Voice over IP (VoIP) and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). VoIP has begun to be widely adopted in the enterprise as a PBX replacement, mainly because it allows the IT departments to manage just one (IP-based) network instead of two separate networks for voice and data. VoIP has also become popular as a lower cost replacement of PSTN service in backbone networks, access networks and for PC-to-PC calls. Wireless LANs have been around for at least a decade as well. In the recent years, the emergence of WiFi hotspots combined with the easy availability of WLAN solutions in notebooks has made wireless networking hugely popular. In this paper, we describe an architecture for VoIP deployment over WLAN that is based on Intel's WLAN product for notebook platforms. We address the issue of providing adequate QoS support for VoIP applications and controlling the number of VoIP calls in a WLAN network using admission control.