VoIP - Voice Over IP

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. As the term says, VoIP carries audio signals (mainly human) through IP packets and is delivered through the Internet. VoIP can use accelerating hardware to achieve this purpose and can also be used in a PC environment. IP is a well-known and heavily used protocol and is used in nearly all Internet transactions. It is a protocol that manages addressing and routing between networks and hosts.

Since the very early days of distance communication, signals were sent in analog form, in waves. Many years ago, the communication world discovered that sending a signal to a remote destination could have been done also in a digital fashion: before sending it we have to digitalize it with an ADC (analog to digital converter), transmit it, and at the end transform it again in analog format with DAC (digital to analog converter) to use it. VoIP works like that: digitalizing voice in data packets, sending them and reconverting them in voice at destination.

Digital format can be better controlled: we can compress it, route it, convert it to a new and better format, and so on. We also saw that a digital signal is more noise-tolerant than its analog version.

TCP/IP networks are made of IP packets containing a header (to control communication) and a payload to transport data: VoIP uses it to go across the network and come to destination.

Voice Over IP

VoIP is becoming a key driver in the evolution of voice communications. VoIP technology is useful not only for phones but also as a broad application platform enabling voice interactions on devices such as PCs, mobile handheld, and many vertical-specific application devices where voice communication is an important feature.

VoIP supports two-way transmission of voice traffic over a packet-switched IP (Internet protocol) network. The first widely used VoIP application appeared in the mid-1990s, with services that enabled Internet users to make free voice calls between specially equipped PCs, or between a regular phone and a specially equipped PC. This was a great way to save toll charges on long-distance and international calls. Today, with rapidly advancing technologies, voice quality on managed VoIP networks can match the public voice network.

The primary reason for VoIP was to provide access to voice communication to anyone in any part of the world with minimal or no cost through the Internet backbone. The future of Internet phone would allow an individual to have a personal number which would enable him to communicate from any part of the world without having to pay exorbitant prices.

In addition to IP, VoIP uses the real-time protocol (RTP) to help ensure that packets get delivered in a timely way. Using public networks, it is currently difficult to guarantee Quality of Service (Qos).

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