VoIP's a hot topic these days, im sure youve all noticed.
Generally speaking VoIP is the transfer of voice over the internet usually utilising either the SIP or IAX/IAX2 protocols.
The uses of VoIP are usually utilised in order to lower communication costs, and is applied both to the residential and business markets. For example, an international corporation has offices around the world. In order to reduce communication costs they could deploy a VoIP solution and all their inter-office calls would go over a broadband connection rather than the phone lines.
The process is relativly simple. You deply a VoIP server, set up extensions and passwords on it, (ie 701/abc, 702/xyz, 703/asd etc,) and then assign each user an extension. the user can then enter this extension into a SIP capable phone, (hard phone or software phone) and then they can talk between themselves free. Free because its all going over the internet via the server. So in effect, Joe who is extension 701 in the USA can dial 702 and the phone would ring in the office in Japan.
Another form of usage , apart from free calls between users on the internet, is calls to standard fixed line phones on the PSTN. In this scenario, the international corporation wants to reduce its call costs to all outbound calls, using VoIP. Generally they would look for a 'A-Z terminations' supplier who supplies prepaid minutes in Bulk (such as
www.voipjet.com) for example.
Terminations suppliers have the ability to provide lower costs on international calls because they either have their own network of servers world wide which are connected to local PSTN's in those countries, or they have agreements with companies which run such gateways.
So in effect, the international corporation making calls would route its calls over the internet to the country which has a local gateway, and terminate international call at a local destination rate..!
This is the basics to all of the voip based services, including skype.
All the info you could ever need is in
www.voip-info.org
Asterisk is an open source PBX which plays a key role in all this and can be found at
www.asterisk.org. There is also a distribution called asterisk@home which can easily be launched from cd and gets you started pretty quickly. If you are interested in VoIP equiptment take a look at
www.voipsupply.com. you can see some of the gateways and pbx's there. the Wifi phones are pretty cool too.
And finally if anyone has any good deals on 1u servers or used 1u's servers please contact me asap. relavent for the next 48 hours only
Any further questions feel free
11-06-06, 03:27
VoIP 101
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