IP telephony

When the concept of voice-over-IP (VoIP), or simply broadband telephony and IP telephony, first emerged it represented a revolution in the way long distance telephone calls could be conducted. Today, however, IP telephony embodies much more than cheap long distance telephony.

By textbook definition, IP telephony (Internet Protocol telephony) is a general term for the technologies that use the Internet Protocol's packet-switched connections to exchange voice, video, presence, and other forms of information that have traditionally been carried over the dedicated circuit-switched connections of the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) as represented in figure 1.

Using the Internet calls travel as packets of data on shared lines, avoiding the tolls of the PSTN. The challenge in IP telephony is to deliver the voice and video packets in a dependable flow to the user.

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