VoIP: Riding the IP wave

Tired of paying those humongous telephone bills for those STD and ISD calls made to your near and dear ones? Well, Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, promises to make life easier for you. It is the standard to deliver voice using the Internet protocol. Using this, voice is first converted into the digital format and then sent as packets over the Internet, thus enabling the use of the Internet to make voice calls. There are two VoIP signaling protocols that are in the limelight, the H.323, an ITU standard, and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), an IETF standard. Although the two do not make up the complete set of protocols for Internet telephony they are in the limelight because they are two competing standards.

Just like any other technology, both these protocols have their set of supporters and detractors and both the groups are equally vociferous in their arguments for and against these standards. Check out some of the arguments pitting the two protocols against one another in the Web sites given here. For those of you who are yet to get a hang of the topic, the Web sites listed below should be able to give you a better understanding of this technology that's changing the way we make phone calls.

Protocol stop

Get the complete lowdown on VoIP with this Web site. The basis for VoIP technology is the packet switching network in order to transfer voice and this poses a problem because it has to route its services through a circuit switched network. In order to overcome this problem, the ITU defined a standard H.323 for packet based multimedia networks. Check out the H.323 architecture and commands at this Web site.

SIP standards

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) plays a very important role in Internet telephony. This Web site not only provides an overview of SIP, but also has white papers, news and FAQs on this topic.

http://www.sipforum.org/ 

The SIP Forum is a non profit organization that promotes awareness and provide information regarding SIP, information in the form of news, white papers and links to other sites. There is also a section on the various products available like SIP proxy servers, telephony gateways, test equipment etc.

H.323 standards

The H.323 protocol is a standard defined by the ITU for packet based multimedia services. H.323 provides standards for interoperability between LANs and other networks and allows customers to use multimedia applications without changing their network infrastructure. This web site discusses all these aspects and more.

H.323 Vs SIP

Although the site is not entirely dedicated to VoIP this particular section is, and starts with the introduction to VoIP and moves including strategies for moving to a IP-telephony solution. There's also a very interesting debate over H.323 Vs. SIP.

More VoIP

This Web site contains tutorials, FAQs, standards, information on VoIP products etc. You could also join the newsgroups and forums to air your views on the developments on the VoIP front, not to mention the innumerable articles on the site discussing the various aspects of

VoIP.

White papers

These are two white papers on VoIP with diagrammatic illustrations. They also talk of the various applications and advantages of VoIP, how to implement VoIP in systems and also software support for VoIP. There is also information on other protocols, H.323 architecture, T.120 protocol stack and also the interoperability and complexity issues dogging the implementation of

VoIP.

Krithi Aiyappa


Source: www.ciol.com