Wide are networks (WAN) play a key role in delivering unified communications in distributed enterprises, but many conventional WAN network monitoring tools don't provide enough visibility to analyze real-time voice and video as effectively as other applications.

They do not give WAN managers enough visibility into their VoIP traffic at all times. That means managers often don't discover problems until users complain that a connection is garbled. Things like duplex errors within the MPLS network affect all traffic, and the lack of visibility is an issue due to the sensitivity of VoIP traffic. Complaints about call quality usually throw up a red flag that other things are amiss, such as duplex errors. This is a common challenge for networking pros, and fortunately some WAN monitoring vendors like NetScout Systems are beginning to address it by beefing up their unified communications analysis tools.