Voice over IP A Discussion of Business and IT Challenges

In order to discuss the material presented in this paper one must understand some basic terms that IT and business executives will encounter when these vendors make their sales pitch. What is Voice over IP? Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the basic method of carrying voice calls over an IP network. This includes digitization and packetization of voice streams1. In other words, it is a mechanism of sending voice traffic over a data network. Illustration below shows a basic (VoIP) setup.

Figure 1: Basic Voice over IP

Phone A can call Phone B as long as they are both connected to same data network. The basic idea behind VoIP is that it can send a telephone call over the same networks that carry data throughout a company, whether it be a local-area network (LAN), a corporate intranet, a wide-area network (WAN), or even the public Internet. To do so, the technology converts analog sound into tiny digital units called packets, then sends those packets over the network and reassembles them in the correct order on the receiving end 2. WAN LA