Voice over IP (VoIP) is a very confusing subject to many people, not least because there are so many different applications of the technology.
There are those who think of it as just a way of making cheap, poor-quality phone calls from the home via the Internet. Another use of VoIP sees telecoms carriers using IP-based networks to carry over 10 percent of international voice traffic.
For IT managers, however, the prime application of VoIP is for converged voice and data LANs, where voice calls are routed over existing networks.
After a slow start due to fears of high costs and poor reliability, VoIP may at last be taking off in the corporate market. The standards have matured and, as a consequence, new products are driving prices down and improving performance and functionality. The quality of transmission has improved a lot and is now very close to that of standard phone calls.
A sign of the technology's advance can be seen in products being sold through distributors rather than directly from manufacturers, which indicates that the support requirements are fairly basic.
For any firm wanting to take advantage of VoIP, the easiest way is to buy a VoIP gateway and gatekeeper for each site and hook it into the PBX.
Least-cost routing algorithms then send calls over the VoIP system when appropriate. The gateway and gatekeeper functions are usually combined in one compact box.
VoIP can economically connect remote offices, but there is also a new use for it in the corporate sector. The growth of telecommuting means that firms are beginning to provide staff with broadband connections at home so that their PCs can be part of the office LAN via secure virtual private networks (VPNs). VoIP can use this infrastructure to integrate remote phones into the office system so that users can have DDI numbers, use voicemail and transfer calls.
One vendor, BOScom, has a neat, USB-powered box that connects a standard phone to a PC, where software hooks it into the office PBX via a VPN and the VoIP gateway at headquarters. This is a case where the saving in call costs would probably not justify the expenditure, but the extra functionality may make it worthwhile.
Once a company has a standards-based VoIP gateway installed, it can make the IP address public. This allows customers to save money on calls and makes the business appear better organised.
Although gateways are usually connected on the unprotected side of the firewall, they can be attached to the LAN if the firewall is relaxed slightly. In each case there is a theoretical reduction of security because of possible bugs within the firewall and gateway.
Given these recent developments, it now looks like a good time for IT managers to re-examine the case for streamlining their operations using VoIP.
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