A study of WLAN Roaming and its implications for Voice Services

Wireless networks are fast becoming ubiquitous in today’s highly networked world. Wireless networks are easy to con-struct and are often used as an extension to the existing IP network. With the advent of third generation mobile technology, the focus has shifted from circuit switched to packet switched networks. By combining VoIP and 802.11 (WLAN) technologies, an affordable wireless telephone sys-tem can be constructed. In this paper, the performance of voice quality in wireless networks and how it is affected by handovers is studied. In the study of various experimented conducted, it is observed that voice quality is indeed ad-versely affected especially with background data (with the assumption that WLAN networks are not exclusively used for voice traffic). Delays during handovers hamper voice quality the most