VOIP Solution and Service

If you’re considering replacing your traditional telephone service with Internet Voice, be prepared with all the pros and cons. As with any introduction of a new product, there are a few potential drawbacks to VoIP.

For one, home alarms systems that rely on phone lines will not work with a broadband connection. If you have an alarm, you should consider retaining a regular phone line, despite the added cost.

Then there’s the 911 issue. Emergency calls made through VoIP service are not directed to traditional 911 Emergency Response Centers. Instead, calls are directed to a PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point). For this reason, Consumer Reports and other analysts say you should consider keeping an active analog phone line available for emergencies. In addition, VoIP services won’t work in a power outage.

As of yet, there is no VoIP-specific phone book, and VoIP phone numbers are not yet included in directory assistance. Your name may be listed, but the number will be unlisted.

Other potential drawbacks, according to Consumer Reports, are security risks. Since the phone is being used through an Internet connection, editors worry that VoIP service could fall prey to viruses, hackers, and spam.

Voip is the latest buzzword in the Internet world. Everyone in this technosavy world is overwhelmed with the facilities it offers. Well, then…. its just right to know that it all started in 1995 when Vocaltec Inc. released Internet Phone Software. This software could be used on PC’s that had modems, microphones, speakers and sound cards. Both the caller and the person being called had to have the same software. Thus, the first IP phone was born.

Now most IP switching and routing suppliers offer VOIP as a standard option on equipment. By the year 2000, VoIP made up over 3% of voice traffic. It is expected to increase substantially. VoIP traffic is expected to account for 25-40% of all international voice traffic in the recent coming years.

VoIP may have once been looked upon as being a novelty, but it is growing in popularity and viability. Many technology providers now offer PC telephony software. Initially, VoIP offered PC-PC telephony through the use of business intranets. With the advances in gateway infrastructure and telephony software, VoIP technology is also available over the Internet.

Today the telecommunications market is flooded by a host of VoIP phones offering a host of new features. Cisco is one major player in the VoIP phone market which provides a complete range of communications devices designed to take full advantage of the power of an individual’s converged voice and data network, while offering the convenience and user-friendliness usually expected from a business phone.

Cisco Unified IP phones help improve productivity by meeting the needs of different user-organizations; from the main lobby to the busiest manager’s desk, from the manufacturing floor to the executive suite, as well as users at home, on the road, or in the branch office. Cisco IP phones provide LCD displays, including dynamic softkeys for call features and functions, support for information services (including Extensible Markup Language capabilities), the ability to customize XML-based services to provide users with access to a variety of information such as stock quotes, employee directories, or any other Web-based content. For instance, Cisco IP Phone 7940 addresses the communication needs of a transaction type worker. It provides two programmable line and feature keys, plus a high quality speakerphone. It has four dynamic soft keys that guide users through call features and functions. Built-in headset port and integrated Ethernet Switch are standard with it. The Cisco IP Phone 7960G is designed to meet the communication needs of professional workers in enclosed office environments-employees who experience a high amount of phone traffic in the course of a business day. The Cisco 4612 IP phone incorporates all the major features of a VoIP phone and works on your Internet Protocol (IP) voice network.

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Most of the VoIP service providers attract the consumers by offering a host of new and exclusive features. However, it is the consumer who should decide which features are going to benefit him and which are going to be just a mere addition to the long list of VoIP features. After features the price factor is the most important one to decide which VoIP provider will be most beneficial for you.

Today Skype, Lingo and Vonage are three leading players in the VoIP arena who are providing the best VoIP services to their customers and offering a tough competition to each other. Skype has three basic plans, a PC-to-PC call, SkypeOut and SkypeIn. A PC-to-PC call can be made using the Skype messenger is the best option as it is free of cost and fulfills all promises made on the official Skype website. However, if you don’t wish to get wired and want to make calls on landlines and mobile phones from your PC and receive calls from those on your PC, then you can use SkypeOut and SkypeIn plans respectively. Skype’s cost plans are uncomplicated as compared to those of Lingo. However, if you make frequent international calls to Asia then you can take advantage of Lingo’s Asia package. Lingo’s international call rates to individual countries are lower than those of Vonage but higher than Skype. Skype has the lowest call rates but is limited in features. On the other hand, Vonage is consistent with its call quality and also delivers features, but it is quite heavier on your pocket. Although it cannot match its voice quality, Lingo can compete on features with Vonage. Hence, the features are many and the utility diverse, but you should first set your priorities right and decide what is the most advantageous to you.

With the growing use of VoIP, the threats hovering over it have also multiplied significantly. Hence, it has now become essential for any small or large business to be vigilant and maintain a security checklist for their VoIP service.

Nowadays VoIP is in the news not for the great savings in long distance calls that it offers but for the security concerns attached to it. As VoIP runs through internet, the information exchanged can be intercepted by anyone at any time. Moreover, because of its popularity VoIP has become a soft target for the hackers. In the absence of a strong firewall system, hackers may capture sensitive information such as credit card number and bank details. They can even launch denial of service attacks and shut down a voice conversation, or send spam or virus over the internet to disrupt the services. Another vulnerability that the IT sector is worried about the hacking of VoIP networks for making free calls. According to industry sources, a new generation of “phreakers” may be able to manipulate the data switched through a hybrid TDM-VoIP network which will allow them to exploit the billing system to make free calls. Another menace that is plaguing the VoIP networks is ‘caller-id spoofing’. There are some hacking websites that allow people to control the phone number that appears on the receiver’s caller-id display. Moreover, they can modify their voice with the help of voice modification software. Thus, they have become a useful tool for private investigators and pranksters.

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The software for VoIP is a collection of programs, applications and protocols to manage the VoIP devices, gateways, gatekeepers and the IP network. The significance of VoIP software is underlined by the increasing demand for higher quality of service from consumers. Effective software programming translates into effective management of calls—in terms of routing of the calls through the least congested paths—and clarity of voice.

VoIP software can be classified according to the different functionalities in the VoIP network. These functionalities include the management of user interfaces, call processing, network management and billing. User interface software handles the interface to the user of IP telephone. The important features of the user interface include algorithms to compress voice data, echo cancellation and encryption. Call processing servers are run by software to map the destination of the call. The software is a database program called soft switch. The software translates the phone number into a unique IP address after checking the validity of the number. Call administration software, called consoles, are applications that manage the state of the calls and the distribution. This software provides bandwidth management. Some of the customer-oriented services managed by software are billing services. This includes pre- and post-paid services. Some provide voicemail services that synthesize voice for mails. IP soft phones are managed by software that lets the user directly connect with the VoIP provider through a computer. Skype software is rapidly capturing the market with millions of phone minutes. However, these days software development is accelerated by the need to solve various issues such as loss of packets and sequencing of packets.

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Whenever there’s a new technology, there’s an almost immediate demand for technical support and this is true of VoIP systems. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is basically a process which converts your voice into digital signals that travel over internet. Its most prominent feature is its affordability. With VoIP you can make long distance calls at a fraction of cost that you used to pay to your telephone companies.

As VoIP technology has some ties to existing technology, there are many people who are just a few steps away from being prepared to install, maintain, repair and trouble shoot the VoIP systems. Large companies especially may find that there are those within the organization who need a minimal amount of training in order to be ready for this task. If you have large universities or technical schools in your area, you may also find that these have some excellent training opportunities. Though there seem to be a limited number of colleges and technical training facilities that offer VoIP training as a regular curriculum item, there’s little doubt that it will come in the near future. Distance learning is also an option in many areas. If you don’t find some VoIP training that you’re interested in available in your area, consult area universities, libraries or community programs about the possibility of establishing a VoIP distance learning class. There are several advantages to distance learning over correspondence or online courses. If none of these are available, or if you simply can’t commit to regular meeting times, you may find that online courses in VoIP is a great way to get the training you need.

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With the advancement in VoIP, spam has also encroached from our e-mails into our VoIP voicemail. ‘Spam’ which was a very common thing for any e-mail user has now started perturbing the VoIP users as well.

‘Spam over Internet Telephony’ or SPIT is much more deadly than its e-mail cousin. E-mail spam can only degrade the service and clog up the bandwidth which in turn can delay your useful mails by a few minutes. However, the VoIP spam hits the VoIP gateways directly which degrades the voice quality, which is something very upsetting for the end user. The open nature of a VoIP phone call makes it easy for spammers to send audio-commercials to people’s VoIP voice-mail inboxes. VoIP is completely insecure at the protocol level; there is no encryption and authentication. People can easily hack a caller ID and claim to be whomever they want. And since VoIP services aren’t regulated, customers aren’t entitled to the same rights and protections as standard phone users, consumer groups get. Any open, IP-based phone system could be a target of “spitters.” That includes such services as Free World Dialup, SIP phone, and Earthlink’s Free Online Calling program. Other services, such as Skype and Vonage would be more immune to such attacks because portions of those networks operate over a closed system that the spitters would have to hack. However any network architecture is vulnerable to hacker attack, in fact Skype users were subjected to an unsolicited Voice Broadcast Message earlier in 2004 following which the company quickly patched the loophole within a couple of days. Hence, the VoIP industry is very well aware of the potential for SPIT and a number of companies are developing solutions to address it, it will be interesting to see the future developments in this field.

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Almost all of the VoIP providers provide Voicemail with the standard VoIP calling plan. The special feature of the VoIP voicemail plan is in how the consumer can access his/her VoIP voicemail message.

In general, there are 4 ways in which a VoIP consumer can access their voicemail. First of all, you can access your voicemail through your primary VoIP telephone by dialing *123 or some other combination of numbers (VoIP voicemail access code varies by provider). The automatic attendant will let you know how many voicemails you have and walk you through retrieving all of your new voicemails and saving/deleting your old emails. It is quite a slick system. The second method is via a local voicemail access number, where you can call a local telephone number from any telephone (Cell phone/Land line/ VoIP phone). When you dial into your local voicemail access number, the auto attendant will ask for you to punch in your VoIP phone number and password to be able to access your VoIP voicemail system. The third method is through your VoIP provider online account management portal. You can go to your Provider’s VoIP homepage and access the “Customer Login” portal by typing in your username and password. Once into the portal, click on the Voicemail tab and you can listen to your new voicemails over Internet connection. The fourth method, and possibly the most useful, is every time you get a new VoIP voicemail, you are sent an email. That email will state that you have a new voicemail from your VoIP account, the date the voicemail was received, and an attachment of the voicemail as a .wav file. One outstanding feature is that you can save the .wav file on your computer’s hard drive and email the voicemail to friends, family, or coworkers. Hence, when you add these four ways up, you will be able to access your voicemail from virtually anywhere.

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It is true that a broadband connection will give you more consistent, reliable VoIP call quality, but similar results can be obtained using a dial up account if some guidelines are followed.

First of all, it is important to note that all VoIP service providers are different i.e., all of them do not support dial-up users. For instance, companies such as Vonage back away from dial up connections. However, the providers that do support dial up usually only support dial-up above certain speeds. The two most popular companies that do support dial up VoIP are Callserve and Go2Call. To make a good voiip call with dial-up, close all the programs that are running in the background to get higher call quality. If you are using Windows, just right click & close all open non-essential applications that are shown in your taskbar at the bottom right of your screen. If you are using Windows XP & there are other users logged on, be sure they log off before trying to make a call. Other activities that will compete for bandwith with your VoIP call are: Instant Messaging, checking your email, web cameras, surfing the internet or downloading anything. Scan your system frequently for Viruses and Adware, these programs can tie up your browser and internet connection, slow down your system and affect your call quality. Use a headset with a boom microphone and this should eliminate annoying voice echoes often associated with VoIP phone calls. If you use a headset, voice signals are limited in volume and thus the chances of your microphone re-transmitting those voice signals is greatly reduced. Thus, following these guidelines you can enjoy VoIP with dial-up connection also.

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