FREE ESSAY ON VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL(VOIP)

VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL(VOIP)

VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL
(VoIP)
INTRODUCTION:
In the eyes of most, all packets are created equal. One of the most active areas of
telecommunications today is in the area of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The logic
behind this trend makes perfect sense. If we have invested heavily in an Internet
Protocol (IP) network, why can't we make full use of it? This is a question posed by many
managers and Information Technology (IT) professionals in a wide range of businesses.
Many businesses would prefer to have one network in and out of their business for reasons
ranging from cost effectiveness to manageability. IP telephony offers a promise of
consolidation. This will allow an enterprise to converge its traditional phone system and
newer data network for greater efficiency. Arieh Dranger, president of neXTel Systems LLC
says, "I don't think it's a question of whether we need VoIP, but when it will come
together, because it represents a natural progress of integrating data—period. The
IP protocol is probably the most efficient at combining a universal communications
network." Basically, IP telephony is taking the telecom world by storm. It has evolved
from a little known and used application in 1995 to an application that is poised for
global adoption. But as with all technology, there is a price to be paid, and several
entities vying for a piece of the pie. 
WHAT IS VoIP and HOW DOES IT WORK?
To put it simply, VoIP means Voice over Internet Protocol. It's a technology that allows
network managers to route phone call over the network they use for data transmission. A
voice travels over a corporate Intranet or the Internet instead of the public telephone
system. Special gateways installed at both the sending and receiving end of a
communications channel converts voice to IP packets and back again to voice. This process
must take place in a time frame of less than 100 milliseconds to sustain the Quality of
Service (QoS) that users are accustomed to from the Public Switched Telephone Network
(PSTN). 
Now let's take a walk on the more detailed side of what VoIP is and how it works. First
and foremost, VoIP is an emerging technology still in the early stages. A personal
computer (PC) must capture an analog voice and convert it to a digital signal, compress
the audio with a compression-decompression (codec) device and then move it into the IP
protocol stack. The codecs are at the heart of any IP telephony software. It is an
algorithm that transforms analogue signals into digital ones and vice versa. The next
step is to access the network, which is the premise modem connected to the PSTN and
channeled to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) modem. The next link in the chain of
events is the IP network itself or the Internet. The current structure of the Internet
can make it an unstable and unpredictable carrier. Finally, the voice packet must
transition back from the IP network to the PSTN, to the receivers' modem for conversion
back into analog. Each of these steps adds more delay to the voice packets. A delay
approximately of over 550 milliseconds, which is 400 msecs over the QoS acceptable limit,
is found to occur. These delays and other issues are just some of the challenges facing
the future of VoIP. 
WHY IS VoIP AN ISSUE?
Between 1994 and 1997 ISP revenue grew from about $189 million to over $4.75 billion
dollars, making it the telecommunications success story of the nineties. This
extraordinary growth, coupled with relatively inexpensive connectivity for the typical
user has helped drive the emergence of VoIP. To the typical personal user, this
technology will mean nothing more than the ability to make "free" long distance phone
calls. However, to the business world, this technology holds some very profound promises.
It's the ability to avoid long distance phone charges that has many scrambling to control
the future of VoIP. Companies ranging from the traditional common carriers to the newer
next generation telcos are all scrapping for a share of this lucrative market. The VoIP
portion of this emerging market is expected to grow at a rate of 149 percent annually
through 2001 to about $1.89 billion dollars with high estimates of $9.4 billion by 2002.
With this much money and revenue at stake, local and state governments, which derive
millions of dollars from taxing voice carriers, are also taking notice of this emerging,
unregulated threat. 
Another issue of this technology is the fact that there has yet to be a standardized set
of protocols for the manufacturers and vendors. This is leading to proprietary hardware
and software, which all leads to incompatibility and increased expense. As with all
technologies and advances, the bottom line is the dollar. These are just a few of the
many issues facing global adoption of VoIP.
THE PLAYERS INVOLVED 
To follow this technology and understand its implications, one should be aware of the
players involved in the game and know each ones motivation. 
The Big Three. The Big Three players are AT&T, MCI WorldCom, and Sprint. They perhaps
have the most to lose and the trickiest balancing act to perform. They must take special
precautions to ensure they do not cannibalize their very lucrative PSTN. The traditional
phone system is over an $100 billion a year business. In terms of market share, VoIP is
barely a blip on the Big Three's radar screens. However, these big carriers have not let
this technology go unnoticed. AT&T offers a calling card that allows its user VoIP for as
low as 3.5 cents a minute. AT&T has recognized this new threat and is aggressively doing
something about it. They have hired new talent and leadership; acquired a new
facilities-based business company in TCG; bought a facilities-based consumer company in
Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI); began a global venture with BT; bought the IBM global
services network for IP; and expanded its wireless reach with Vanguard Cellular. Also in
February of this year AT&T announced a joint venture with Time Warner Inc. that allows it
to enter the local-service market via cable in 33 states. AT&T is also experiencing a
metamorphosis of its corporate culture which is allowing more free flow thinking from all
employees. 
MCI WorldCom sells a click and talk Web-based voice service for enterprises with
e-commerce sites which allows customer service reps to talk to buyers over the IP
connection while shopping online. MCI WorldCom has also been on the mergers and
acquisitions path in order to meet this new challenge. 
The Big Three have aggressively been working on this new market and the outcome has yet
to be seen. With lower barriers to entry than in the traditional communications networks,
they face many new entrants in this battle.
Regional Bell Companies (RBOC's): 
The regional Bell Companies have a vested interest in this area as the Internet replaces
the private networks in which they have such heavy investments. It takes nearly 8 years
for PSTN capacity to double. The Internet doubles capacity every 18 months. This is
strong motivation for the regional Bells to preserve their investments. The smart
regional Bell companies are already putting new strategies in place. US West is relying
on its nationwide XDSL rollout. This program will combine US West's voice and data
customers by replacing a $30 dollar a month voice customer with a $60 dollar a month high
speed Internet and voice customer. It treats voice as an Internet service.
Bell Atlantic is also working on its' plans. It is looking to provide services similar to
that of US West. These regional carriers are however limited to their own calling
territories as per FCC regulations until they can show that they have local competitors.
Many cable companies are following this approach. To protect revenues, US West, Bell
Atlantic, and Southwestern Bell have provided for tariffing and will tax a VoIP call. 
Next Generation Telco's:
Service providers are also positioning themselves as next-gen telcos by adding to their
Internet service offerings. Qwest is planning and implementing a high capacity, IP based
fiber optic network. Its mission is to allow customers to seamlessly exchange multimedia
content images, data, and voice as easily as traditional telephone networks enable voice
communications. Qwest's OC-48, IP over Sonet backbone, spanning 130 countries, is nearly
complete. The Denver based company will offer an IP based integration service for
business. It will be capable of taking out multiple private lines and do multiple
applications over a single IP service pipe. 
Level 3 is another player in the Pure VoIP field. Level 3 doesn't use compression on its
network for voice calls. That allows a packet to travel from one end of the country to
the other in less than 90 msec., which matches PSTN quality. Along with companies like
Qwest, Level 3 is pouring billions of dollars into developing and deploying cutting edge
backbones for offering IP based voice, data, and video services.
Government:
Another player to this game is of course the Government, Government at every level. Many
questions are arising in their eyes. What defines an Internet call? How will local
governments react to losing a large source of revenue that was being generated from local
telephone calls? Some foreign governments are already taking a stand against VoIP.
Pakistan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, due to losing revenue to VoIP, has
banned voice over the Net. 
The Government players will ultimately have the most profound effect on how this
technology plays out. This player needs to be closely watched.
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF VoIP
There are numerous advantages cited for VoIP. They are as far reaching as they 
are controversial. Some of the advantages to the business user included: Cost reduction,

simplification, consolidation, advanced applications, backward compatibility, new revenue
streams, and more efficient infrastructures. 
Cost reduction will be seen across the board from cheaper to "free" long distance calling
to less investment in hardware and software. This will be extremely beneficial to those
companies with international markets. It will be more cost effective for a business to
maintain one network than two separate ones. Standardization of a voice/data network will
reduce total equipment costs as well. Network managers will have to assume the role of
managing voice packets and protocol as well as data. VoIP is backward compatible with
video conferencing and other applications already in place in many organizations and it
supports multimedia applications and multiservice applications, something the traditional
phone service cannot compete with.
There are several obstacles that VoIP must overcome. Latency is one of the largest
obstacles facing this technology. Latency is the delay or time between packets that have
the same destination and compose the same message. If there is latency between voice
packets this will cause the conversation to be choppy and unintelligible. VoIP expends
and average of 40 to 60 msecs of delay per gateway. That kind of overhead gets noticed
pretty quickly, especially when you are traversing multiple gateways. Interoperability is
another key issue. The best way to date for voice traffic to travel from an IP network to
PSTN is Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP). This protocol allows an ISP's switch
server to manage and control SS7 switches on a PSTN, and the gateways on an IP network. 
Security, reliability, and training are also drawbacks too fully integrating VoIP within
an organization. Security is an issue with the H.323 protocol. H.323 is a protocol used
for voice over Internet protocol. Compared to more mature services such as FTP, Telnet,
and HTTP, H.323 is relatively new, thus many proxy servers do not support it. Users
making calls on this protocol must be placed outside of the corporate firewall.
Many people have become accustomed to their phone with all its fancy features. Call
waiting, holding, transferring or redirecting calls are options not available with todays
software. Finally, reliability remains a major obstacle. When it comes time to have to
reboot the computer after it locks up, that lost call was hopefully not an important
client.
WHAT'S NEXT 
As with all technologies, new products and systems are emerging everyday to help
alleviate some or all the disadvantages of incorporating VoIP. New protocols are emerging
as well. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), and
Simple Gateway Control Protocol (SGCP) are protocols designed as alternatives to H.323.
They are designed to reduce bandwidth overhead, security issues, and time sensitivities
not covered by H.323. Level 3 and a group of other next-gen telcos has developed a
protocol called Internet Protocol Device Control (IPDC). This protocol was designed for
use between centralized switches and IP-based gateways, providing management and
integration on a very large scale. 
By working on the problems of latency, security, reliability and manageability, VoIP will
be more poised than ever to begin its global roll out.
CONCLUSION
The VoIP market is turbulent and characterized by a variety of approaches. These
approaches range from the desktop to the carrier switch to the Internet. The players are
as equally far flung, from the traditional cornerstones of the Plain Old Telephone System
(POTS) to the new generation startups, to the steps of local, state, and federal
governmental agencies. Such dynamism makes it difficult for IT managers to filter the
flood of information and assess how VoIP might fit into their networks. Unless PSTN
undergoes some massive restructuring, its long-term existence in its current form is in
serious doubt. Emerging Internet technologies will be the low cost solution for managers
looking for mixed traffic connectivity. Only in the end, after all the smoke has cleared
will we know which business models survived the shake down in this lucrative market.
Other problems are bound to arise in the arenas of technology and regulation. At this
point there is significant progress to be made in the area of VoIP to achieve the quality
we enjoy today with the PSTN. 
The only sure thing from this technology or any other that will always be consistent,
reliable and never become outdated is that the Government WILL find a way to ensure their
revenue stream… after all "There's no such thing as a free lunch."