What is IP Telephony?

If you are watching any television at all, there is no doubt that you have been exposed to a barrage of commercials from major providers such as Vonage, and AT&T, advertising the new internet phones.  The Forrester Research Group predicts that, by the end of the year 2006, nearly 5 million U.S. households will have made the switch to internet phones.  Without a doubt, voice-over IP telephony is the hottest wave in growing technologies, and a growing number of communication companies want in.  But you may be asking yourself,- what is this internet phone revolution all about, and how does it work?

In this section we hope to answer some of your basic questions about VoIP, what it is, and how it works.  The goal is to provide you with a knowledge base sufficient to help you make informed decisions about the many product offerings on the market today, and which options are right for you.

VoIP stands for Voice-Over Internet Protocol, and it refers to the ability to send voice messages over the internet, piggy-backing the messages by making use of the internet's packet switching technology,- the same technology that we use to send e-mail, and look at web pages.

When you send an e-mail or look at a web page, you are not looking at an open connection featuring a steady stream of continuous information.  Rather, you are looking at data that has been sent in tiny bits, or "packets" of information, and then transmitted across the internet.  When you send an e-mail, for example, you are not opening a direct connection between your computer and the computer of your recipient.  Rather, you are sending out a packet of information that is then transmitted to another computer.  This computer, in turn, takes a look around to determine which direction your message should be headed.  In essence, the computer sends out the question, "does anybody know where this goes?", and then it sends the packet along it's way to another computer which does the same thing, passing it along until it eventually reaches the intended recipient.   So rather than think of this flow of data as a direct connection, traveling along a straight path, it's more accurate to think of it as a lightening bolt, which zigzags it's way across the country, passed along from one computer to another until it reaches its desired destination.

On the other hand, the traditional public phone system makes use of a much more straight forward technology called "circuit-switching."  

What it means is this:-  if you pick up your traditional phone, say, on the east coast in North Carolina, and you hear a dial tone, this means that your local carrier has opened a connection for you.  Then, when you dial the number you are calling, say,- to California, this gives the phone company the information it needs to begin switching circuits all the way across the country, allowing your voice to travel over one thin interconnected piece of copper wire to its destination all the way across the country.  Now, modern times have seen some advancements in the public-switched telephone system which make this description not entirely accurate, but in it's essence this system remains the same, an extraordinary achievement that has been in service in this country for over 100 years.  

The advantage of the public-switched telephone system is it's reliability.  The disadvantage is it's efficiency.  From the point of view of modern information technology, a system that transmits voice in this way (maintaining a constant, open connection from one point to another), is extremely inefficient, and the result is that you have to pay higher prices than you should, especially for long distance calls.  The ability to send your voice over the internet in data packets allows your messages to travel quickly and more efficiently, along the least congested pathways.  And since the bits of data are broken into tiny pieces, (or "packets") a larger amount of phone calls can be transmitted simultaneously over a smaller amount of space (this "space" required for data transmission on the internet is called "bandwidth").

In the next section we will discuss what options are available for you in VoIP, and how they can save you and your business money by being more efficient.

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