Telephone Communications for Today's Business
IP PBX, Virtual Office, Hosted IP PBX, Callback, Virtual Numbers, Meetme Conference ...
 

1. IP Telephony

Recently, IP Telephony has become a buzz word in telecommunications and international business fields.  So exactly what effects IP Telephony will bring to telecommunications and international business fields?

 What is IP Telephony 

IP Telephony, Internet Telephony, VoIP (Voice over IP network), and Computer Telephony all refer to the same thing. They all mean that we use an IP-based network or a packet switched network to transmit voice, video, or any other real time signal. IP stands for Internet Protocol, and by packet switched network, we mainly mean the public Internet or the LAN (Local Area Network) inside a company or a university. Therefore, IP Telephony essentially involves transmitting voice over the public Internet.

Why We Want IP Telephony 

We have a perfect telephone network to transmit voice. And we have another network: Internet, which is perfect for data. The voice goes to the telephone network and data goes to the Internet. What's wrong with this? The issue here is that every company needs to install and maintain two networks: one for data and one for voice. People have noticed that this is a great waste. There is no reason to keep two networks around. One network should be able to handle both voice and data. Consequently, every company would only need to worry about one network. This is called Network Convergence. During network convergence, we pick one network and get rid of the other one. The Internet is the winner. That means we want to transmit not only data but also voice through the Internet instead of the telephone network. We also noticed that if we could transmit voice over Internet, we will get a few other benefits, which will be elaborated upon later. All of this makes IP Telephony the logical and efficient choice for any business' telecommunication needs.

How IP Telephony Works

Generally speaking, to be able to transmit voice over IP-based network (or packet switched network), we need to convert voice into data and packetize the data. Then we send the packetized data over an IP-based network to the right receiver. Finally, the receiver needs to convert the packetized data back to the original voice.
 
More specifically, IP telephone communications procedure can be broken into the following steps:
  1. Both caller and callee's IP phone are registered to an IP Telephony server.
  2. Caller dials the callee's phone number using IP phone or ATA+traditional phone.
  3.  The IP Telephony server translates callee's phone number to callee's IP address.
  4. Caller's IP phone is connected to callee's IP phone.
  5. Caller's IP phone converts caller's voice to packetized data.
  6. Packetized data is transmitted to callee's IP phone over IP-based network.
  7. Callee's IP phone converts packetized data back to voice.
  8. Close the connection after hangup.
Note: IP phone can be replaced by ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) + traditional phone. ATA is a device for connecting traditional phone to IP-based network so that we can use traditional phone for IP Telephony. In IP Telephony ATA alone or traditional phone alone will not work. ATA+traditional phone = IP phone.

Differences between Telephone Network and IP-Based Network

The telephone network is a circuit switched network. That means when a caller calls a callee, they will exclusively use one channel (circuit). During the entire telephone call, they occupy this channel and no one else can use this channel until they finish their telephone conversation. This is why telephone companies charge us by minutes and distance. It's because we occupy that channel for the whole duration of the phone call even during the time when we are not talking. This is the main reason that the telephone network is reliable, has good voice quality but is more expensive and not efficient.
 
On the other hand, the IP-based network is packet switched network. In packet switched network, all channels are shared by everyone and no one really occupies any channel. Whenever someone has a packet to send, he will go ahead and do so. If a channel is available, the packet will be sent to the receiver. If no channel is available, the packet will wait until a channel become available. That's why we are charged by the usage, not the time and distance. This is why the packet switched network is flexible, efficient and less expensive but the voice quality is not guaranteed.

IP Telephony Benefits

Arguably, the most important benefit we get from IP Telephony is that there is only one network we need to install and maintain ever. This gives us great savings. If we already have a company network and a connection to the Internet. It'll seem like we get IP Telephony for free.
 
Another important benefit is cost reduction. With IP Telephony, we are not charged by time and distance. Instead we are charged by the usage. Therefore, the telecommunications cost is greatly reduced.
 
For international business, we will get even more savings because the traditional telephone calls are charged by time and distance. Therefore, international phone calls are much more expensive than local phone calls. But, if you use IP Telephony, you will enjoy the same low price for local phone calls as well as international phone calls. This makes IP Telephony even more attractive to international companies. 
 
Advanced telecommunications features will improve today's business such as meetme conference, follow-me find-me, virtual office, telecommuter, remote call center, unified communications, etc. These advanced telecommunications features come naturally with IP Telephony, either we get for free or pay a small fee. Most of the above advanced telecommunications features is either impossible or very hard to implement in traditional telephone system.

Differences between Voice and Data Transmissions 

Packet switched network or Internet was designed for transmitting data, not voice. The biggest difference between voice and data transmissions is that data can tolerate delay but voice cannot. Think about it: if an email arrives one minute later, we don't even notice that. But in the case of voice conversation, the second sentence has to be after the first sentence and before the third sentence and in the right timely manner. Otherwise the voice will become incomprehensible on the receiver side.
 
On the other hand, voice can tolerate error but data cannot. In an email, if the letter a becomes b, that word will not be readable. But in the case of voice, if there is a transmission error, we just hear a little bit more background noise. We don't even notice and certainly don't care as long as the speaker is understandable.

IP Telephony Challenges

 IP Telephony started in the end of last century but it didn't take off until recent years. The main reason for the delay of acceptance is that a few issues blocked the road of IP Telephony's  application.
 
Because of the nature of packet switched network, the voice quality became the most important issue. Packet switched network is an extremely harmonic world. All packets have equal rights. At a given time, if there are more packets than the network can handle, some packets have to wait. However, voice packets don't have the luxury to wait because voice packets are time sensitive data. If we let voice packets wait, the waited packets will will lose their meaning and therefore become useless. Remember, packet switched network was invented for data transmission, not voice. Voice packets don't enjoy but will suffer from packet switched network's equality environment. Therefore, we have to break the equality society in packet switched network.
 
Another issue was the lack of practical standard of IP Telephony protocol. All the IP Telephony devices need to speak the same language to be able to connect each other. Therefore we need good international standards for IP Telephony to become practical.
 
 The third issue was the lack of transition plan from traditional telephone system to IP Telephony system. IP Telephony is not difficult but we need a complete plan to successfully transfer from traditional telephone system to IP Telephony system step by step. Otherwise, the transition will fail.
 
The last but not least issue is the NAT (Network Address Translator). NAT is a device invented to rescue the IPv4 address shortage crisis. NAT is a crucial technique to save IPv4 Internet from dying. But it also created few serious problems. Arguably, this is the biggest one. NAT translates private IP address to public IP address and vice versa. Because of this translation two callers IP phones get each other's private IP address, not the public IP address, which they really need. The private IP address is not reachable outside of their own LAN (Local Area Network). So these two IP phones cannot talk to each other using their private IP address.
 
All these issues have been investigated and addressed in a satisfactory level. Without going into technical details, we are going to talk about the solutions next.

 Solutions to IP Telephony Issues

Let's briefly discuss the solutions for above IP Telephony issues.
 
The easiest and most effective way to solve the voice quality issue is to break the equality environment by prioritizing packets in packet switched network. Because voice packets simply cannot wait, we need to give voice packets higher priority. That means voice packets need to be preferred citizens in a packet switched network world. In order to transmit voice over Internet successfully we have to introduce un-equality to Internet to give favorite treatment to voice packets. This is what Internet is doing right now and we see the voice quality getting better every day.
 
 Secondly, we are developing better international standard protocols for IP Telephony. The first generation IP Telephony standard is H323. The current generation standard is SIP and the next generation standard could be IAX like protocol.
 
The planning for transition from traditional telephone communication to IP Telephony is different from company to company. The rule of thumb is that step by step, group by group, section by section and always have a disaster survival plan. 
 
Finally, there are a lot of effective techniques to handle NAT issue in IP Telephony. They work 99.9% of the time. So most likely, NAT will not become an issue for your company. 

Summary 

IP Telephony provides great benefits to everyone in the world but also has issues that need to be resolved completely.  All the issues, however, have be addressed to an acceptable level. Therefore, IP telephony has become practical and useful. Because of the great benefits, IP Telephony will become accepted by more and more people.
 
The current telephone and telephone system was one of the great inventions ever. Our daily life has depended on it for over a century. It has been useful since it was invented without any revolutionary change. But this is the time for a revolution. The next generation of telecommunications will be IP Telephony and IP Telephony will replace traditional telephone communications to become the main stream land phone communications.
 

2. IP PBX 

 
 
Lui Communications provides VoIP services to small and medium companies to help them understand how Internet telephony can improve the way they handle business. We help you take advantages of IP PBX and save money. Lui Communications provides the following professional services:

VoIP (Voice over IP) is communications of the future. It will help you minimize your telecommunications cost and do business more effectively. Other companies are taking advantages of VoIP. Why not you? Call Lui Communications today for a FREE consultation to see how you can benefit from Lui Communications IP telephone services.

Based on your business needs, Lui Communications will design and implement the right telephone communications system to help you do business better and save you money.

IP PBX, Hosted IP PBX, Virtual Office, Virtual Phone Number, Meetme Conference
 
1-541-667-9015
8670 147th Terrace
Beaverton, OR 97007
USA
Virtual Office is the best way to manage international business. When you start an international business, it's better to build a Virtual Office first. After your business builds up you can easily convert your Virtual Office into a real office. Virtual Office is an economical way to start an international business. Virtual Office is flexible and powerful. Virtual Office means you have a real office phone system in a foreign country. When a local customer calls your Virtual Office you answer calls in main office. With Virtual Office you get more calls, means more business. Virtual Office is really affordable. Through Virtual Office you can handle international business in one office. Virtual Office lets you do business in a foreign country without being there.  Lui Communications' Virtual Office gives you auto attendant, virtual phone number, unlimited extensions, conference rooms, callback service, FREE international calls, etc. Virtual Office gives you all features you need for international business. Call Lui Communications for a FREE consultation. Lui Communications can build your Virtual Office anywhere in the world. Virtual Office will save you money and increase you international business. Virtual Office is a must for small and medium international companies. Get your Virtual Office today.
 
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