Traditional deployments of phone systems sometimes place telephones on a separate voice-only VLAN for segmentation and Quality of Service. Should a customer implement a separate VLAN for Skype for Business? When the internet connection at a customer site goes down, devices already logged into Skype4B will continue to function for a period of time that can’t be guaranteed but new connections will fail. While traffic to our hosted platform will use the private circuit, the telephones need access to the internet to do DNS lookups of external resources and to perform SSL certificate checks.

Second, what if Skype4B Private Line remains up but the customer’s internet connection goes down? This scenario is unsupported.First, what if Skype4B Private LIne itself fails but the customer’s separate internet connection remains up? In this scenario the customer can configure their routing to prefer the private circuit for connectivity to our IP address range for hosted Skype4B and to use the internet when that connection is unavailable.If a customer has Skype4B Private Line, why do they also need an internet connection? The customer has strong technical resources to integrate Private Line into their network.

The customer’s existing internet connection is already saturated and provisioning additional bandwidth is undesirable (too difficult, unavailable, or too expensive).

The customer wants their voice traffic to traverse a more reliable path than the internet offers.

The customer wants QOS so audio (and possibly video) traffic is prioritized over other traffic.

The customer wishes to benefit from us managing the circuit and their bandwidth.

When is Private Line a good solution for a customer? While the Skype4B traffic is routed over the MPLS connection, the customer must maintain a reliable internet connection as well to support SSL certificate checks and DNS queries. The private line terminates into a DMZ which exposes all customers to the outside of our hosted platform (vs a more traditional on premise installation where customers would connect to the inside of the network). An MPLS local loop to the customer site(s) is used and implements a dedicated VRF/CUG for the traffic for one customer. Skype for Business Private Line provides MPLS connectivity to the hosted Skype for Business platform instead of using the internet.

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