The Basics of Voice over Internet Protocol (Basics Books series)

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), the transmission of person-to-person voice conversations over IP–based networks, is a topic of great interest within the telecommunications industry. With VoIP service, customers see an opportunity to significantly reduce their local and long-distance calling expenses, while long-distance carriers have seen an opportunity to possibly avoid sharing a large portion of their revenues with the local telephone companies for use of their access links to originate long-distance calls. Moreover, service providers and customers see an increasing appeal in the rich array of services that VoIP enables. Among these are a range of Web-like phone displays, information services, and data exchange. The Basics of Voice over Internet Protocol examines the fundamentals of delivering VoIP service while exploring its potential in the communications market. VoIP is now becoming a mainstream service offered by RBOCs, CLECs, long-distance carriers, international carriers, and virtually any entrant to the transport business. Yet despite this, multiple standards for VoIP still exist, making the interworking of vendor products and the myriad alternative protocols—H.323, SIP, MGCP, etc.—a continuing issue. Further, the quality of VoIP telephone conversations is still under question, and the seeming significant initial costs of setup, including the change-out of phones and PBXs, as well as the addition of gateway and gatekeeper devices, may undermine the benefits to be had from implementing VoIP. As the industry moves forward, the direction of the complete national network is toward an IP–based architecture, and voice traffic seems to be moving in this common direction. There are many challenges still to be addressed, but the benefits of VoIP continue to draw mounting levels interest, pushing this technology ever further into the mainstream of communications. The Basics of Voice over Internet Protocol analyzes this trend in depth while bringing readers up to date on the evolution of VoIP service.