Voice over Internet Protocol

Definition
Internet telephony refers to communications servicesvoice, facsimile, and/or
voice-messaging applicationsthat are transported via the Internet, rather than
the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in
originating an Internet telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to
digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol
(IP) packets for transmission over the Internet; the process is reversed at the
receiving end.

Overview
This tutorial discusses the ongoing but rapid evolution of Internet telephony, the
market forces fueling that evolution and the benefits that users can realize, as
well as the underlying technologies. It also examines the hurdles that must be
overcome before Internet telephony can be adopted on a widespread basis.

Topics
1. Introduction
2. Intranet Telephony Paves the Way for Internet Telephony
3. Technical Barriers
4. Standards
5. Future of VoIP Telephony
Self- Test
Correct Answers
Glossary

1. Introduction
The possibility of voice communications traveling over the Internet, rather than
the PSTN, first became a reality in February 1995 when Vocaltec, Inc. introduced
its Internet Phone software. Designed to run on a 486/33-MHz (or higher)
personal computer (PC) equipped with a sound card, speakers, microphone, and
modem (see Figure 1), the software compresses the voice signal and translates it
into IP packets for transmission over the Internet. This PC-to-PC Internet
telephony works, however, only if both parties are using Internet Phone software.

Figure 1. PC Configuration for VoIP

In the relatively short period of time since then, Internet telephony has advanced
rapidly. Many software developers now offer PC telephony software but, more
importantly, gateway servers are emerging to act as an interface between the
Internet and the PSTN (see Figure 2). Equipped with voice-processing cards,
these gateway servers enable users to communicate via standard telephones.

Figure 2. Topology of PC-to-Phone

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 Figure 3. Sequence of VoIP Connection: PC-to-Phone

A call goes over the local PSTN network to the nearest gateway server, which
digitizes the analog voice signal, compresses it into IP packets, and moves it onto
the Internet for transport to a gateway at the receiving end (see Figure 4). With
its support for computer-to-telephone calls, telephone-to-computer calls and
telephone-to-telephone calls, Internet telephony represents a significant step
toward the integration of voice and data networks.

Figure 4. Sequence of VoIP Connection

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Originally regarded as a novelty, Internet telephony is attracting more and more
users because it offers tremendous cost savings relative to the PSTN. Users can
bypass long-distance carriers and their per-minute usage rates and run their
voice traffic over the Internet for a flat monthly Internet-access fee.

Figure 5. PC-to-Phone Connection

Figure 6. Phone-to-Phone Connection

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2. Intranet Telephony Paves the Way for
Internet Telephony
Although progressing rapidly, Internet telephony still has some problems with
reliability and sound quality, due primarily to limitations both in Internet
bandwidth and current compression technology. As a result, most corporations
looking to reduce their phone bills today confine their Internet-telephony
applications to their intranets. With more predictable bandwidth available than
the public Internet, intranets can support full-duplex, real-time voice
communications. Corporations generally limit their Internet voice traffic to half-
duplex asynchronous applications (e.g., voice messaging).

Internet telephony within an intranet enables users to save on long-distance bills

between sites; they can make point-to-point calls via gateway servers attached to
the local-area network (LAN). No PCbased telephony software or Internet
account is required.

For example, User A in New York wants to make a (point-to-point) phone call to
User B in the company's Geneva office. He picks up the phone and dials an
extension to connect with the gateway server, which is equipped with a telephony
board and compression-conversion software; the server configures the private
branch exchange (PBX) to digitize the upcoming call. User A then dials the
number of the London office, and the gateway server transmits the (digitized, IP
packetized) call over the IPbased wide-area network (WAN) to the gateway at
the Geneva end. The Geneva gateway converts the digital signal back to analog
format and delivers it to the called party.

Figure 7. PCto-Phone Connection

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 Figure 8. Internet Telephony Gateway

This version of Internet telephony also enables companies to transmit their

(digitized) voice and data traffic together over the intranet in support of shared
applications and whiteboarding.

3. Technical Barriers
The ultimate objective of Internet telephony is, of course, reliable, high-quality
voice service, the kind that users expect from the PSTN. At the moment, however,
that level of reliability and sound quality is not available on the Internet,
primarily because of bandwidth limitations that lead to packet loss. In voice
communications, packet loss shows up in the form of gaps or periods of silence in
the conversation, leading to a clipped-speech effect that is unsatisfactory for most
users and unacceptable in business communications.

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 Figure 9. Internet Telephony

The Internet, a collection of more than 130,000 networks, is gaining in popularity

as millions of new users sign on every month. The increasingly heavy use of the
Internet's limited bandwidth often results in congestion which, in turn, can cause
delays in packet transmission. Such network delays mean packets are lost or
discarded.

In addition, because the Internet is a packet-switched or connectionless network,

the individual packets of each voice signal travel over separate network paths for
reassembly in the proper sequence at their ultimate destination. While this
makes for a more efficient use of network resources than the circuit-switched
PSTN, which routes a call over a single path, it also increases the chances for
packet loss.

Network reliability and sound quality also are functions of the voice-encoding
techniques and associated voice-processing functions of the gateway servers. To
date, most developers of Internet-telephony software, as well as vendors of
gateway servers, have been using a variety of speech-compression protocols. The
use of various speech-coding algorithmswith their different bit rates and
mechanisms for reconstructing voice packets and handling delaysproduces
varying levels of intelligibility and fidelity in sound transmitted over the Internet.
The lack of standardized protocols also means that many Internet-telephony
products do not interoperate with each other or with the PSTN.

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4. Standards
Over the next few years, the industry will address the bandwidth limitations by
upgrading the Internet backbone to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), the
switching fabric designed to handle voice, data, and video traffic. Such network
optimization will go a long way toward eliminating network congestion and the
associated packet loss. The Internet industry also is tackling the problems of
network reliability and sound quality on the Internet through the gradual
adoption of standards. Standards-setting efforts are focusing on the three central
elements of Internet telephony: the audio codec format; transport protocols; and
directory services.

In May 1996, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ratified the

H.323 specification, which defines how voice, data, and video traffic will be
transported over IPbased local area networks; it also incorporates the T.120
data-conferencing standard (see Figure 10). The recommendation is based on the
real-time protocol/real-time control protocol (RTP/RTCP) for managing audio
and video signals.

Figure 10. H.323 Call Sequence

As such, H.323 addresses the core Internet-telephony applications by defining

how delay-sensitive traffic, (i.e., voice and video), gets priority transport to
ensure real-time communications service over the Internet. (The H.324
specification defines the transport of voice, data, and video over regular
telephony networks, while H.320 defines the protocols for transporting voice,
data, and video over integrated services digital network (ISDN). H.323 is a set of
recommendations, one of which is G.729 for audio codecs, which the ITU ratified
in November 1995. Despite the ITU recommendation, however, the Voice over IP

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(VoIP) Forum in March 1997 voted to recommend the G.723.1 specification over
the G.729 standard. The industry consortium, which is led by Intel and Microsoft,
agreed to sacrifice some sound quality for the sake of greater bandwidth
efficiencyG.723.1 requires 6.3 kbps, while G.729 requires 7.9 kbps. Adoption of
the audio codec standard, while an important step, is expected to improve
reliability and sound quality mostly for intranet traffic and point-to-point IP
connections. To achieve PSTNlike quality, standards are required to guarantee
Internet connections.

The transport protocol RTP, on which the H.323 recommendation is based,

essentially is a new protocol layer for real-time applications; RTPcompliant
equipment will include control mechanisms for synchronizing different traffic
streams. However, RTP does not have any mechanisms for ensuring the on-time
delivery of traffic signals or for recovering lost packets. RTP also does not address
the so-called quality of service (QoS) issue related to guaranteed bandwidth
availability for specific applications. Currently, there is a draft signaling-protocol
standard aimed at strengthening the Internet's ability to handle real-time traffic
reliably (i.e., to dedicate end-to-end transport paths for specific sessions much
like the circuit-switched PSTN does). If adopted, the resource reservation
protocol (RSVP), will be implemented in routers to establish and maintain
requested transmission paths and quality-of-service levels.

Finally, there is a need for industry standards in the area of Internet-telephony

directory services. Directories are required to ensure interoperability between the
Internet and the PSTN, and most current Internet-telephony applications involve
proprietary implementations. However, the lightweight directory access protocol
(LDAP v3.0) seems to be emerging as the basis for a new standard.

5. Future of VoIP Telephony

Several factors will influence future developments in VoIP products and services.
Currently, the most promising areas for VoIP are corporate intranets and
commercial extranets. Their IPbased infrastructures enable operators to control
who canand cannotuse the network.

Another influential element in the ongoing Internet-telephony evolution is the

VoIP gateway. As these gateways evolve from PCbased platforms to robust
embedded systems, each will be able to handle hundreds of simultaneous calls.
Consequently, corporations will deploy large numbers of them in an effort to
reduce the expenses associated with high-volume voice, fax, and
videoconferencing traffic. The economics of placing all trafficdata, voice, and
videoover an IPbased network will pull companies in this direction, simply
because IP will act as a unifying agent, regardless of the underlying architecture
(i.e., leased lines, frame relay, or ATM) of an organization's network.

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Commercial extranets, based on conservatively engineered IP networks, will
deliver VoIP and facsimile over Internet protocol (FAXoIP) services to the
general public. By guaranteeing specific parameters, such as packet delay, packet
jitter, and service interoperability, these extranets will ensure reliable network
support for such applications.

VoIP products and services transported via the public Internet will be niche
markets that can tolerate the varying performance levels of that transport
medium. Telecommunications carriers most likely will rely on the public Internet
to provide telephone service between/among geographic locations that today are
high-tariff areas. It is unlikely that the public Internet's performance
characteristics will improve sufficiently within the next two years to stimulate
significant growth in VoIP for that medium.

However, the public Internet will be able to handle voice and video services quite
reliably within the next three to five years, once two critical changes take place:

an increase by several orders of magnitude in backbone bandwidth and

access speeds, stemming from the deployment of
IP/ATM/synchronous optical network (SONET) and ISDN, cable
modems, and x digital subscriber line (xDSL) technologies, respectively

the tiering of the public Internet, in which users will be required to pay
for the specific service levels they require

On the other hand, FAXoIP products and services via the public Internet will
become economically viable more quickly than voice and video, primarily because
the technical roadblocks are less challenging. Within two years, corporations will
take their fax traffic off the PSTN and move it quickly to the public Internet and
corporate Intranet, first through FAXoIP gateways and then via IPcapable fax
machines. Standards for IPbased fax transmission will be in place by the end of
this year.

Throughout the remainder of this decade, videoconferencing (H.323) with data

collaboration (T.120) will become the normal method of corporate
communications, as network performance and interoperability increase and
business organizations appreciate the economics of telecommuting. Soon, the
video camera will be a standard piece of computer hardware, for full-featured
multimedia systems, as well as for the less-than-$500 network-computer
appliances now starting to appear in the market. The latter in particular should
stimulate the residential demand and bring VoIP services to the mass market
including the roughly 60 percent of American households that still do not have a
PC.

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Self-Test
1. The first Internet-telephony software, Internet Phone, supported PCtoPC
and telephone-to-telephone voice calls via the Internet.

a. true

b. false

2. The current reliability and sound-quality problems of Internet telephony are

attributable to limitations in Internet bandwidth and compression technology.

a. true

b. false

3. As a packet-switched or connectionless network, the Internet decreases the

chances of packet loss for a voice call.

a. true

b. false

4. To date, most developers of Internet-telephony software and vendors of

gateway servers have used the same speech-compression protocols.

a. true

b. false

5. The ITU has ratified a standard for voice, data, and video transmission over
IPbased local area networks.

a. true

b. false

6. ITU's H.320 standard defines the protocols for transporting voice, data and
video over:

a. PSTN

b. ISDN networks

c. the public Internet

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7. The G.723.1 specification for audio codecs, recommended by the VoIP Forum,
requires:

a. 6.3 kbps

b. 7.9 kbps

c. 8.4 kbps

8. Internet-telephony directories enable:

a. users to determine other users' Internet addresses

b. users to determine whether an Internet site is capable of receiving

Internet-telephony transmissions

c. Internet/PSTN Interoperability

9. In the near term, the market segment expected to be the biggest driver for
VoIP telephony is:

a. small-office/home-office (SOHO) customers

b. military/government networks

c. corporate intranets/extranets

10. The public Internet will be able to transport voice calls reliably and with high
quality when:

a. standards are established for Internet directories

b. manufacturers produce higher-quality, lower-cost audiocodec

technology

c. various technologies deliver greater backbone-network and subscriber-

access speeds

Correct Answers
1. The first Internet-telephony software, Internet Phone, supported PCtoPC
and telephone-to-telephone voice calls via the Internet.

a. true

b. false

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2. The current reliability and sound-quality problems of Internet telephony are
attributable to limitations in Internet bandwidth and compression technology.

a. true

b. false

3. As a packet-switched or connectionless network, the Internet decreases the

chances of packet loss for a voice call.

a. true

b. false

4. To date, most developers of Internet-telephony software and vendors of

gateway servers have used the same speech-compression protocols.

a. true

b. false

5. The ITU has ratified a standard for voice, data, and video transmission over
IPbased local area networks.

a. true

b. false

6. ITU's H.320 standard defines the protocols for transporting voice, data and
video over:

a. PSTN

b. ISDN networks

c. the public Internet

7. The G.723.1 specification for audio codecs, recommended by the VoIP Forum,
requires:

a. 6.3 kbps

b. 7.9 kbps

c. 8.4 kbps

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8. Internet-telephony directories enable:

a. users to determine other users' Internet addresses

b. users to determine whether an Internet site is capable of receiving

Internet-telephony transmissions

c. Internet/PSTN Interoperability

9. In the near term, the market segment expected to be the biggest driver for
VoIP telephony is:

a. small-office/home-office (SOHO) customers

b. military/government networks

c. corporate intranets/extranets

10. The public Internet will be able to transport voice calls reliably and with high
quality when:

a. standards are established for Internet directories

b. manufacturers produce higher-quality, lower-cost audiocodec

technology

c. various technologies deliver greater backbone-network and

subscriber-access speeds

Glossary
ATM
asynchronous transfer mode

DLE
DTM LAN emulation

FAXoIP
facsimile over Internet protocol

IP
Internet protocol

ISDN
integrated services digital network

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ITU
international telecommunications union

KBPS
kilobytes per second

LAN
local-area network

LDAP
lightweight directory access protocol

MHz
megahertz

PBX
private branch exchange

PC
personal computer

PSTN
public switched telephone network

QoS
quality of service

RSVP
reservation setup protocol

RTCP
real-time control protocol

RTP
real-time protocol

SOHO
small-office/home-office

SONET
synchronous optical network

VoIP

voice over Internet protocol

VPN
virtual private network

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WAN
wide-area network

xDSL

x digital subscriber line (e.g., x = A for "asymmetric", x = H for "high bit-rate")

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