It was VCCS' new PeopleSoft-based SIS (student information system), which includes the registration application, that sealed the decision to go VoIP for everything earlier this year. VCCS configured the SIS ASP (application service provider)-style, with a central server at its Richmond, Va., headquarters, which all the campuses access. The savings were significant: It cost $450,000 for the central servers, compared with $2.1 million for servers at each campus. "This left us wondering how to get voice to the boxes," says Larry Hengehold, vice chancellor for information technology services at VCCS. "It would have cost about $750,000 a year for '800' support for touch-tone. So we looked at how to bring voice on at no cost."

Voice over ATM was too expensive for the campuses, so VCCS installed Cisco Systems 3640 routers with IP voice interfaces at each site, and is now replacing tie lines for T1s, and PBXes and analog Centrex for IP phones. "All VCCS users need to know is the dial-access code, and when students register by phone, they dial into a local college number," Hengehold says. "The call is automatically nailed to the IVR through the VoIP network."

One of the biggest challenges early on with VoIP was that each of the older PBXes used its own signaling technology, and the PBX vendors had to come in and configure their equipment to talk to the Cisco 3640s. VCCS also had to insert white noise and background ringing to the voice calls. "It was a little unnerving for users not to have" those familiar tones, Hengehold says.

The next phase for VCCS is to convert its ATM video to IP H.323 technology. So far, VCCS campuses use IP video for point-to-point videoconferencing, but VCCS wants to use it for multipoint distance learning, too. The colleges today run about 400 video sessions a week using H.321 over ATM. H.323 will be phased in within a year.

For now, VCCS uses only the IP precedent-bit feature in its routers to give voice traffic priority, and that's plenty of QoS (Quality of Service) because voice represents a small portion of VCCS' traffic and voice packets travel just a single hop between locations. But the upcoming IP video traffic eventually may force VCCS to fiddle with the ToS (Type of Service) header in its routers and switches, too. "You have to be careful not to overrun the network and desktops on campus with H.323 traffic--that can happen quickly," Hengehold says.

Meanwhile, like many colleges and universities, VCCS is looking to Internet2, the next-generation IP backbone based on IPv.6, which would address the future QoS and bandwidth demands of an expanded distance-learning program at VCCS.