WirelessVT Residential Internet Service - Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) FAQ

What is VoIP?

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol.

As the term says VoIP is the transmission of voice communication through IP packets and, therefore, through the Internet. VoIP can use accelerating hardware to achieve this purpose and can also be used in a PC environment.

Webopedia defines it as: A category of hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls. For users who have free, or fixed-price Internet access, Internet telephony software essentially provides free telephone calls anywhere in the world. To date, however, Internet telephony does not offer the same quality of telephone service as direct telephone connections.

There are many Internet telephony applications available. Some, like CoolTalk and NetMeeting, come bundled with popular Web browsers. Others are stand-alone products. Internet telephony products are sometimes called IP telephony, Voice over the Internet (VOI) or Voice over IP (VOIP) products.

If you're wondering whether this is something that can just replace your standard home telephone service, the answer is that many are doing just that, and Vonage seems to be the popular choice.

How does it work?

Early on it was determined that it was possible to send a voice signal to a remote destination digitally, as well as via analog. To do that, we have to digitize 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.

This is basically the way VoIP works, sending voice information in digital form in discrete packets rather than in the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). A major advantage of VoIP and Internet telephony is that it avoids the tolls charged by ordinary telephone service.

What do I need?

In order to use some of the basic services, (net2phone, IConnectHere), you can probably get away with just your PC, an internet connection, and your speakers/microphone. Most feel that using a headset is a much better solution.

In general, you need:

A high-speed internet connection. This can be a cable modem, or a super high-speed services such as ISDN, DSL or a T-1 link. The link you choose will depend upon the amount of telephone traffic you intend to use.
A VoIP box - about the size of a telephone modem. - your telephones just plug into the box. And your ordinary phone lines allow remote users to call in from outside.
An account with a VoIP provider. Your account can be configured to recognize your calls automatically, or you can require your users to enter their unique account numbers, issued by you.

Why would I be interested?

When you are using Public Switched Telephone (PSTN) line, you typically pay for the time you use: The more time you stay on the phone the more you'll pay. And you generally don't have the option of talking with more than one person at a time (or you can, but at increased cost).

Using our unlimited plan as an example, someone in New York and Los Angeles both on our unlimited plan, would spend $30 a month each and could talk forever.

You could also use a program like Skype, which will allow you to talk to other Skype users unlimitedly for free. You can also share video over the conversation.

Why isn't everybody using it?

Like many new technologies, there have been some problems with VoIP. In order to be effective, voice data communication has to be a real time stream. (You wouldn't want to finish a sentence, then wait for many seconds before you could hear the other side answering.)

With normal internet protocols, you can have a network consisting of many routers (20 - 30 or more) which can result in a very high round trip time (RTT).

In addition to standard 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). Better service is possible with private networks managed by an enterprise or by an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP).

As of this writing, VoIP is still plagued by lack of generally accepted interoperability standards.

What is a VoIP Gateway?

A VoIP gateway can be loosely defined as a mechanism that takes circuit-switched voice from a traditional PBX, converts it to IP and transfers it across a LAN or WAN to another gateway where it is reconstituted back into a format that is understood by the receiving phone system.

Gateway functionality can be obtained through stand-alone boxes, modules or chassis cards for proprietary boxes; also expandable routers or software and expansion cards for Windows NT servers.

One of the front-runners in VoIP, Cisco is taking a modular approach with a voice-over-IP card that fits its routers. Cisco says all of its products can easily be equipped for voice and that voice packets can be guaranteed via quality-of-service (QoS) policy implementation on a Cisco-switched network.

Lucent, Nortel Networks and Siemens offer similar strategies for providing VoIP gateway capabilities in some form or another.

While gateways are the most popular VoIP products on the market -- available from at least 30 vendors -- the key point here is that you have voice packets running over IP. However, the packets are not running on the Internet, and you're not gaining any of the features and capabilities you get by converging voice and data networks

Does WirelessVT Solutions offer VoIP?

WirelessVT Solutions has partnered with a company like Vonage to bring the ability of our customers to use VoIP without the need to purchase equipment.