IP Telephony Solutions
|
Among the standard office hardware, VoIP phone equipment is slowly but surely becoming the norm. Voice-Over-Internet Protocol telephones carry the speaker's voice over digital bandwidth frequencies, rather than the standard analog phone waves. There are numerous ways that this can be done. IP telephony solutions, or internet protocol telephone capabilities, range from the inexpensive, personal telephone to specialized office hardware. Not only are the options many, the reasons for the rise in voice-over-internet technology are also numerous. Just like the DSL internet connections steadily eclipsed the sluggish, out of date dial-up systems, so internet phone systems are making their mark on today's telephone user.
The technologically savvy have been interested in sending and receiving spoken messages over the internet since the 1970s. By the 1980s, this type of technology was available to end users. This simply was not good enough. How were we supposed to place calls using internet telephone protocol? By the early 1990s, telephone software packages allowed telephone users to send and receive internet based voice messages. The initial drawback was that these software packages did not yet have the capability to convert public switched telephone network, or PSTN, calls into digital data. This limited owners of VoIP phone equipment to only talking to each other. However, the late 1990s brought the growth of the ip telephony solutions industry. These researchers created a switch that could transfer a piece PSTN analog data to a digital voice receiver. Now there are two types of PSTN to Internet Protocol converters. DID, or direct inward dialing, allows the PSTN caller to be directly connected to the internet telephone user. The access PSTN to Internet Protocol conversion system requires the PSTN caller to enter the internet telephone user's extension in order to be switched into the digital voice phone system.
The benefits of ip telephony solutions over the standard PSTN are numerous. Many calls can be transmitted easily over the same broadband connection. In the standard public switched phone networks, adding a phone and supporting numerous telephone calls sometimes proves expensive and difficult. Caller ID, automatic redial and conference calling, because of the speed and efficiency of broadband technology, are cheap or free using VoIP phone equipment. Security is also enhanced using internet protocol telephone systems. Typically, in order to secure a standard telephone line requires digitizing the voice data. Since this is already done over the broadband connection, only encryption is necessary to secure a voice-over-internet protocol connection. The mobility of this type technology is staggering. As long as a user has a stable broadband connection, they are able to make multiple, clear telephone calls.
Though, VoIP telephony solutions are not without its challenges. Because the data travels through bandwidth, it is often difficult to traverse firewalls or other network protection devices. Finding available and reliable bandwidth may prove difficult in some areas even though they have functioning PSTN telephone lines. Just like visual and audio media over the internet, voice data over the internet can be subject to delay. Differences in the delay time can produce a jitter effect. Jittering can be helped by storing the voice data in a jitter buffer. Though, a jitter buffer will increase the overall delay. Using a jitter buffer avoids buffer overrun. Buffer overrun happens when the buffer is emptied before new audio packet has come in. Internet protocol telephone equipment is also susceptible to echoing and losing audio packets due to internet congestion and poor PSTN to Internet Protocol conversion. Because this technology sends audio information over the internet, it travels as voice and data input. As such, it can get clogged amid the data packets currently on the broadband connection. A standard telephone system is free from this concern. However, researchers are working diligently to effectively address these concerns, as well as how to allow the telephones to work better over satellite internet systems.
Looking at VoIP phone equipment, the viewer would have little indication that the system is any different than the PSTN analog systems of old. Internet protocol telephones still have a microphone and ear piece, a keypad for dialing, a display (which is now common in analog telephones as well), processing equipment and a power source (such as a battery plug in). The only visible difference is that the processing hardware plugs into an internet router. If it does not, it may have an internal Ethernet card, which would not be visible just by looking at the telephone. Another piece of hardware that might be present is an analog conversion box. This piece of telephone hardware plugs into the internet and also receives PSTN analog calls. An analog conversion box is a rectangular piece of equipment that then converts the analog signal to a digital data packet to be received by the VoIP phone equipment. These types of converter boxes are typically purchased by individuals or companies that still house both types of telephones and want to receive calls on both.
Some of the differences internally are that ip telephony solutions almost always offer dialing using name or ID. This is a bit different from the standard mobile phone feature, as an internet protocol telephone does not require you to save the ID or name in an SIP list. "Then call thou, and I will answer: or let me speak, and answer thou me." (Job 13:22) Many internet protocol systems offer local and network directories as well as the weather, school attendance, live news reports and other information available on the internet.
|
|
|
|
