• Home
• About SMB Tech Tips
• About the Author
• Helpful Links
• Sponsoring

What is VoIP?

Note: This post plus the four to follow are reposted from December 2006. These all will deal with VoIP, what it is? How it can be used? and Things to be aware.

What is VoIP?

The Internet has established a lot of new things. Companies no longer have to send printed catalogs to customers. These can be put on-line at websites. One of the biggest advantages to this is that it’ll never be out of date. Products can be added or removed as needed and price changes as well.

With this technology another new product has come onto the market. That is Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP.

But what is VoIP?

The telephony standard uses what is termed circuit switched technology. That is when a telephone call is made there is a direct and dedicated path from one caller to another. The path is reserved for the entire conversation.

VoIP treats the voice as data, by turning the words into tiny digital packets of information. Those packets are transmitted over the data network. When received at the other end, the data is returned to audio that can be heard.

Voice IP is not the same as Data IP. In Data communications, such as sending an email, the data may go to a server to be compiled before delivering to the user. The data packets are received and assembled. If one happens to be missing or is corrupted there is a request to resend.

Voice is a real time event. IP Packets are assembled as they are received. The packets received out of sequence are not used. Because of this, there could be missing or delayed information. In technical terms, latency and jitter. To the ear it may be unusable speech.

© 2006-2007 Steven G. Atkinson – All Rights Reserved

*******
Steven G. Atkinson is the author of the book Technology Tips for Small Business. The book is an informational source for Small Business to better understand the technology they use everyday. More about the book Technology Tips for Small Business can be found at tt4sb.com.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.