Voice Over IP: Making The World A Smaller Place
VOIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is also called IP telephony, Intenet telephony, Broadband Telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband. VoIP involves the routing of voice conversations, i.e. conversion of analog signals into digital signals, and then transmitting it via the internet or through any IP based network. Over the last few years, VOIP has become increasingly popular due to its easy accessibility and availability. With the advent of newer software and just a simple headset on a good internet connection, people can now use VOIP to chat with each other in real time. A lot of businesses have also adopted this technology to reduce their expenditure on telecommunications. Companies that provide the VoIP service are called providers. VoIP can achieve tasks that cannot be done by traditional phone systems. It can transmit more than one telephone call through the same broadband connected telephone line. If we carry our VoIP phones with us when we are out on a holiday, we can make/receive phone calls provided the users are connected to the internet. This can be achieved anywhere around the globe. It is purely location independent. Users can avail of features like video conferencing; Video conversations, message or data file exchange while talking over the VoIP phones simply by getting connected to the internet. VoIP's ability to transmitt wideband speech has improved the quality of sound significantly.
There are many challenges that VoIP has to face. Some of them are as follows: 1. Jitter 2. Echo 3. Security 4. Reliability 5. Packet Loss 6. Bandwith Availability Some problems like fixed delay cannot be corrected. But some of the delays can be controlled by making the voice packets delay sensitive. The phenomenon of variation in delay is called jitter. The effect of jitter can be minimized by storing voice packets in a buffer once they reach the destination. The production of echo can be attributed to impedence mismatches in analog circuitry and improper acoustic coupling. If compatible equipment is used, even this can be dramatically reduced. In the event of a power failure, a back-up generator keeps the traditional phones running but in the case of VoIP phones which uses broadband modems and other devices dependant on electric power, the use may become restricted if an uninterrupted power supply is not used. Some of the broadband services are devoid of good quality. IP packets are sometimes lost (if users use such broadband services) on the way and there might be a momentary drop out of voice. This also happens when there is congestion in the network. Technology is improving which will improve VoIP service as time moves on though security is still a problem associated with VoIP. |
