Introduction
The purpose of this document is to provide RingCentral customers with customer site network requirements and recommendations to ensure that the RingCentral unified communications solution operates properly. These requirements include constraints for network capacity,quality of service, firewall configuration, and unsupported devices and configurations. This condensed version contains the same requirements as the expanded version of the RingCentral Network Requirements and Recommendations document but does not include background on the requirements, their architectural context, or bandwidth calculations.
Acronyms
The following acronyms are used in this document:
ACL - Access Control List
ALG - Application Layer Gateway
DPI - Deep Packet Inspection
DSCP - Differentiated Services Code Point
EF - Expedited Forwarding
IP - Internet Protocol
ISP - Internet Service Provider
LAN - Local Area Network
NTP - Network Time Protocol
QoS - Quality of Service
RTP - Real-time Protocol
SIP - Session Initiation Protocol
SPI - Stateful Packet Inspection
TCP - Transport Control Protocol
UDP - User Datagram Protocol
VLAN - Virtual LAN
VoIP - Voice over IP
WAN - Wide-Area Network
Required and Recommended Devices and Configurations
RingCentral requires that the customer network supports a minimal set of features to ensure a high-quality VoIP service.
- Tested Routers - A set of WAN routers has been validated to work properly with the RingCentral VoIP service. The list of recommended routers that have been tested can be found at: ringcentral.com/support/qos-router.html. Other firewalls and routers have not been tested in an end-to-end RingCentral VoIP solution and may or may not work properly.
- QoS/Traffic Prioritization - For the reliable transport of media traffic, customer routers must support and enable traffic prioritization: routers need to be configured such that VoIP and video traffic are handled with Expedited Forwarding (EF) DSCP 46.
- QoS/ Bandwidth Management - It is advised to set a minimum guaranteed bandwidth in accordance with the maximum number of expected phone and video calls. The required bandwidth and network link capacities can be calculated according to the procedure provided in [1].
- VLANs - If VLANs are supported by network switches, then it is recommended (but not required) to define a VLAN specifically for VoIP and video traffic to logically separate these types of traffic from data traffic. This simplifies management of the unified communications infrastructure.
Unsupported Devices and Configurations
Some types of device, device configurations, and network configurations are not supported by the RingCentralVoIP solution, as they are known to cause continuous or intermittent voice quality issues.
Unsupported Devices and Configurations: RingCentral does not support the use of any of the following devices or network configurations to provide VoIP or video service:
- LoadBalancers routing VoIP traffic concurrently across more multiple WAN links
- WAN Accelerators
Device Configurations: For proper support of the RingCentral VoIP and video service, the following device settings must be disabled on routers, firewalls, and Ethernet switches:
- Session Initiation Protocol Application Layer Gateway (SIP ALG)
- Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
- Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)
- WAN Acceleration
- SIP Transformation on SonicWall Security Appliance
- Green Ethernet for power saving
Firewall Control
To allow registration, call control,and media path connectivity, outbound and inbound firewall ports must be opened between the internal customer network and the ISP WAN. The next table summarizes the TCP and UDP ports to be opened on firewalls and routers at the customer site. Inbound and outbound are defined relative to a customer site.
(click to enlarge)
Enterprise-level routers and firewalls usually support Access Control Lists (ACLs) of which the rules can be configured to allow or deny inbound or outbound network traffic based on a combination of IP address and port numbers. Use of any / any ACL rules must be avoided to avoid opening too many ports.
For signaling and media traffic, the ACL must be set to the next IP origination and destinationIP address ranges:
- 104.245.56.0/21, 199.68.212.0/22, 199.255.120.0/22
