Performance Analysis of VOIP over GRE Tunnel

Voice over IP (VoIP) is commonly known as phone service over the Internet. Any service using public IP network requires certain extent of security. Demand for security in VOIP technology is increasing. VPN is one of the commonly used methods to secure VOIP traffic. In this paper we simulated behavior of a VOIP communication while running over a GRE VPN Tunnel using OPNET Modeler 17.5. During the simulation, such performance parameters as: choice of voice signaling protocol, voice Codec, parameters arising from network QoS (in this study, homogenous vs. heterogeneous network environment) and type of VPN tunneling protocol, were examined. We evaluated performance of VOIP communications in homogenous and heterogeneous network environments, configured based on two different signaling protocols, namely H.323 and SIP. Also, G.711 and G.723 were configured and tested as the choice for voice Codecs. GRE was implemented as the tunneling protocol. Result analysis of this study indicated that GRE Tunnel didn't show a significant increase in such call quality of service (QoS) performance factors as: end-to-end delay, call setup time, or a decrease in call MOS value. Even though in a non-ideal (heterogeneous) network environment, call quality of service (QoS) performance factors shoed poor results; however, there was no significant evidence to suggest that GRE Tunnel is the root cause for such poor results.