Answer: Voice Over IP (VoIP) is the technology that enables users to make and receive phone calls thru the Internet as opposed to using the traditional public switched telephone networks (PSTN's).

Answer:VoIP (voice over IP) is an IP telephony term for a set of facilities used to manage the delivery of voice information over the Internet. VoIP involves sending voice information in digital form in discrete packets rather than by using the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN=Public Switch Telephone Network). A major advantage of VoIP and Internet telephony is that it avoids the tolls charged by ordinary telephone service.

Answer:DID is a short for Direct Inward Dial Number ,it is Regular telephone number rings through to your VoIP or a normal phone. The caller will dial your local DID (example Canada number) and the call will reach you while you are in another country (like in China).It is also called virtual phone numbers.

Answer: VoIP involves the transmission of voice communication using the Internet Protocol that is already common in data transmissions on the Internet. Internet telephony software is also available that enables individuals to use the Internet as a transmission medium for essentially free telephone calls to anywhere in the world.

Answer:H.323 is an umbrella recommendation from the ITU-T, that defines the protocols to provide audio-visual communication sessions on any packet network. It is currently implemented by various Internet real-time applications such as NetMeeting and Ekiga (the latter using the OpenH323 implementation). It is a part of the H.32x series of protocols which also address communications over ISDN, PSTN or SS7. H.323 is commonly used in Voice over IP (VoIP, Internet Telephony, or IP Telephony) and IP-based videoconferencing. Its purpose is thus similar to that of the Session Initiation Protocol.

Answer:It will ring like any other telephone call.

Answer:

The primary main advantage of VoIP over traditional analog phone lines is it's cheaper. Other advantages of VoIP are as follows:
Digital features not commonly available on traditional phone lines such as voicemail

• Caller ID
• Conference
• Music-on-hold
• Conference calls
• Call Filtering and Blocking
• Receive voicemail to your email inbox or web page
• Add multiple new inbound area codes for your phone allowing you to create a ‘virtual presence’ in other cities or provide a local calling number to friend and family members.

Answer:

"The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences." (cit. RFC 3261). It was originally designed by Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University) and Mark Handley (UCL) starting in 1996. The latest version of the specification is RFC 3261 from the IETF SIP Working Group. In November 2000, SIP was accepted as a 3GPP signaling protocol and permanent element of the IMS architecture. It is widely used as signaling protocol for Voice over IP, along with H.323 and others. SIP is addressing neutral, with addresses expressed as URL/URIs of various types, such as H.323 address, E.164 telephone numbers or email like addresses.

SIP is a lightweight, transport-independent, text-based protocol. SIP has the following features:

* Lightweight, in that SIP has only six methods, reducing complexity
* Transport-independent, because SIP can be used with UDP, TCP, ATM & so on.
* Text-based, allowing for low overhead

Answer:

The following equipment and services are required to use VoIP:

• High-Speed Broadband connection
• IP Phones (Softphones will require PC) or Analog Telephone Adapters (ATAs)
• A VoIP Service Provider.

Answer: It depends on two primary factors, the amount of bandwidth available and the IP Endpoints connected (whether there are additional components that are providing processing power to improve the connection). Experts do not recommend VoIP through dial-up or other Internet accounts that offer “low” bandwidth. This causes severe loss of quality depending upon the amount of congestion on the Internet, bandwidth limitations leading to packet loss, latency, and jitters.

Answer:IAX (Inter-Asterisk eXchange protocol) is an alternative to the SIP and H323 protocols for initiating and transmitting voice (and other) data over IP. It's a protocol which has been produced by the group developing the Linux-based PBX software Asterisk rather than being a standards-based system. It was developed because it was felt that SIP insufficiently supported: Interoperability with firewalls, a high performance, low overhead protocol, internationalization support, remote dialplan polling, flexible authentication, multimedia support, call statistic gathering, and call parameter communication.

Answer:The answer depends on whether or not you will be using a softphone with your VoIP integration. VoIP does not require any computer to make/receive phone calls (only ATA devices or IP phones). If softphones are used instead of physical phones or (ATA devices), then computers are required.

Answer:

Short for Media Gateway Control Protocol, developed by Telcordia and Level 3 Communications, a control and signal standards to compete with the older H.323 standard for the conversion of audio signals carried on telephone circuits (PSTN ) to data packets carried over the Internet or other packet networks.

The reason new standards are being developed is because of the growing popularity of Voice over IP (VoIP ). Regular phones are relatively inexpensive because they don't need to be complex; they are fixed to a specific switch at a central switching location. IP phones and devices, on the other hand, are not fixed to a specific switch, so they must contain processors that enable them to function and be intelligent on their own, independent from a central switching location. This makes the terminal (phone or device) more complex, and therefore, more expensive. The MGCP is meant to simplify standards for this new technology by eliminating the need for complex, processor-intense IP telephony devices, thus simplifying and lowering the cost of these terminals.

Answer:Yes, VoIP allows web surfing while making and receiving VoIP calls simultaneously. It shares the bandwidth connection with other LAN computers and prioritizes voice.

Answer:E.164 offers a method of using your current telephone number as a means of being contacted in the IP world. Your telephone number gets mapped into a DNS zone, and the zone can contain your contact information (VoIP, instant messenger, email, anything). See e164.orge164.org for further details.

Answer: Definitely, VoIP can replace every single phone in your residence. Both (ATA devices) and IP softphones can be used instead of regular analog phones. This setup requires an account with a VoIP provider. It is recommended that you keep your current telephone service because a loss of power will mean your internet connection will go down and you will not be able to make or receive VoIP calls. VoIP is currently looked upon as a way to reduce your long distance telephone charges while capitalizing on many of the advanced features offered by VoIP technology.

Answer:Yes, VoIP users can make and receive calls to/from public switched telephone lines (PSTN) lines. Any type of calls (e.g. local, long distance, international, etc.) are allowed. This requires an account with VoIP Service Providers that provide termination.

Answer:FXO stands for Foreign eXchange Office: simply put, this interface connects to the analog PSTN line coming from the central office. FXS stands for Foreign eXchange Station: simply put, this interface connects to devices such as analog phones and fax machines.

Answer:

FXS stands for Foreign Exchange Station, and it's the New Communication Age version of a telephone switchboard. It's not so obvious now that most calls are direct dial; in the old days, you dialed in to an operator and told him or her what number you wanted to be connected to; the operator would then dial the number and connect you to your intended chat partner. You may not realize it in the modern age, but phone calls still take place that way; today, however, the switchboard is an automated one.

Answer:Most VoIP Service Providers will allow you to keep your existing public switched telephone phone number for VoIP. However, you will need to check with the provider since not all of them offer this service. A signed ''Letter of Authorization'' will be required by the provider when keeping your number.

Answer:VoIP Service Providers are the next generation telcos that provide interconnection between VoIP and public switched telephone network (PSTN) networks. They allow call origination and termination between these two networks.

Answer:

In telephony, Interactive Voice Response – is a computerised system that allows a person, typically a telephone caller, to select an option from a voice menu and otherwise interface with a computer system.
DID/DDI - Direct Inward Dialing

DID - Direct Inward Dialing (also called DDI in Europe) is a feature offered by telephone companies for use with their customers' PBX system, whereby the telephone company (telco) allocates a range of numbers associated with one or more phone lines.

Its purpose is to allow a company to assign a personal number to each employee, without requiring a separate phone line for each. That way, telephony traffic can be split up and managed more easily.

DID requires that you purchase an ISDN or Digital line and ask the telephone company to assign a range of numbers. You then need DID capable equipment at your premises which consists of BRI, E1 or T1 cards or gateways.

Answer:No, but your Internet connection needs to be powered and working.

Answer:The FCC has organized an FCC Internet Policy Working Group to identify, evaluate, and address policy issues that will arise as telecommunications services move into Internet-based platforms.

Answer: FoIP, short for fax over Internet Protocol, the technology that enables the internetworking of fax machines with a packet-based network. Using FoIP, a fax is transmitted via the Internet rather than the traditional method of sending faxes via the telephone line. Using FoIP, the digital data from the fax machine is separated into packets for transmission (as opposed to the traditional method of converting the fax data into analog to be sent over the PSTN). The digital data requires less bandwidth than the analog data, so FoIP is more efficient than analog faxing.
Voice Activation Detection (VAD)?
In Voice over IP (VoIP), voice activation detection (VAD) is a software application that allows a data network carrying voice traffic over the Internet to detect the absence of audio and conserve bandwidth by preventing the transmission of "silent packets" over the network. Most conversations include about 50% silence; VAD (also called "silence suppression") can be enabled to monitor signals for voice activity so that when silence is detected for a specified amount of time, the application informs the Packet Voice Protocol and prevents the encoder output from being transported across the network.
Voice activation detection can also be used to forward idle noise characteristics (sometimes called ambient or comfort noise) to a remote IP telephone or gateway. The universal standard for digitized voice, 64 Kbps, is a constant bit rate whether the speaker is actively speaking, is pausing between thoughts, or is totally silent. Without idle noise giving the illusion of a constant transmission stream during silence suppression, the listener would be likely to think the line had gone dead.

Answer:VoIP (voice over IP) is an IP telephony term for a set of facilities used to manage the delivery of voice information over the Internet. VoIP involves sending voice information in digital form in discrete packets rather than by using the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN=Public Switch Telephone Network). A major advantage of VoIP and Internet telephony is that it avoids the tolls charged by ordinary telephone service.

Answer:Endpoints sending audio as an RTP stream are not required to send packets during silent periods.
The capability to stop sending RTP packets during silent periods is known as "Silence Suppression" or VAD (Voice Activity Detection). Whether to use Silence Suppression is usually a configuration option on endpoints.
When processing a stream of RTP packets, here is what RFC 3389 has to say about detecting Silence Suppression:
Echo Cancellation
Echo cancellation is the process of removing echo from a voice communication in order to improve the voice call quality. Echo cancellation is often needed because speech compression techniques and packet processing delays generate echo. There are 2 types of echo: acoustic echo and hybrid echo. Echo cancellation not only improves quality but it also reduces bandwidth consumption because of its silence suppression technique.

Answer:

A codec (Coder/Decoder) converts analog signals to a digital bitstream, and another identical codec at the far end of the communication converts the digital bitstream back into an analog signal.
In the VoIP world, codec's are used to encode voice for transmission across IP networks.
Codec's for VoIP use are also referred to as vocoders, for "voice encoders".
Codecs generally provide a compression capability to save network bandwidth. Some codecs also support silence suppression, where silence is not encoded or

• GSM - 13 Kbps (full rate), 20ms frame size
• iLBC - 15Kbps,20ms frame size: 13.3 Kbps, 30ms frame size
• ITU G.711 - 64 Kbps, sample-based. Also known as alaw/ulaw
• ITU G.722 - 48/56/64 Kbps
• ITU G.723.1 - 5.3/6.3 Kbps, 30ms frame size
• ITU G.726 - 16/24/32/40 Kbps
• ITU G.728 - 16 Kbps
• ITU G.729 - 8 Kbps, 10ms frame size
• Speex - 2.15 to 44.2 Kbps
• LPC10 - 2.5 Kbps
• DoD CELP - 4.8 Kbps

Answer:Echo cancellation is the process of removing echo from a voice communication in order to improve the voice call quality. Echo cancellation is often needed because speech compression techniques and packet processing delays generate echo. There are 2 types of echo: acoustic echo and hybrid echo. Echo cancellation not only improves quality but it also reduces bandwidth consumption because of its silence suppression technique.

Answer:

The Real-time Transport Protocol (or RTP) defines a standardized packet format for delivering audio and video over the Internet. It was developed by the Audio-Video Transport Working Group of the IETF and first published in 1996 as RFC 1889 which was obsoleted in 2003 by RFC 3550.

RTP does not have a standard TCP or UDP port on which it communicates. The only standard that it obeys is that UDP communications are done via an even port and the next higher odd port is used for RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) communications. Although there are no standards assigned, RTP is generally configured to use ports 16384-32767. RTP can carry any data with real-time characteristics, such as interactive audio and video. Call setup and tear-down is usually performed by the SIP protocol. The fact that RTP uses a dynamic port range makes it difficult for it to traverse firewalls. In order to get around this problem, it is often necessary to set up a STUN server.

Answer: RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) is a sister protocol of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). It is defined in RFC 3550 (which obsoletes RFC 1889). RTCP stands for Real-time Transport Control Protocol, provides out-of-band control information for an RTP flow. It partners RTP in the delivery and packaging of multimedia data, but does not transport any data itself. It is used periodically to transmit control packets to participants in a streaming multimedia session. The primary function of RTCP is to provide feedback on the quality of service being provided by RTP. It gathers statistics on a media connection and information such as bytes sent, packets sent, lost packets, jitter, feedback and round trip delay. An application may use this information to increase the quality of service perhaps by limiting flow, or maybe using a low compression codec instead of a high compression codec. RTCP is used for QoS reporting. There are several type of RTCP packets: Sender report packet, Receiver report packet, Source Description RTCP Packet, Goodbye RTCP Packet and Application Specific RTCP packets. RTCP itself does not provide any flow encryption or authentication means. SRTCP protocol can be used for that purpose.

Answer:In computing, a softphone is a piece of software for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer, rather than using dedicated hardware. Often a softphone is designed to behave like a traditional telephone, sometimes appearing as an image of a phone, with a display panel and buttons with which the user can interact. A softphone is usually used with a headset connected to the sound card of the PC, with a USB phone or with a "Plain Old Telephone" connected to the PC using an adapter (some types of sound cards or chatcord)

Answer:The Internet Protocol (IP) is the method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet. When you send or receive data (for example, an e-mail note or a Web page), the message gets divided into little chunks called packets. Each of these packets contains both the sender's Internet address and the receiver's address. Any packet is sent first to a gateway computer that understands a small part of the Internet. The gateway computer reads the destination address and forwards the packet to an adjacent gateway that in turn reads the destination address and so forth across the Internet until one gateway recognizes the packet as belonging to a computer within its immediate neighborhood or domain. That gateway then forwards the packet directly to the computer whose address is specified.

Answer:

An analog telephone adaptor (ATA) is a device used to connect a standard telephone to a computer or network so that the user can make calls over the Internet. Internet-based long distance calls can be substantially cheaper than calls transmitted over the traditional telephone system, and ATAs are typically cheaper than specialized VoIP phones that connect directly to a computer's Universal Serial Bus (USB) port.

Answer: A VoIP gateway is a network device that converts voice and fax calls, in real time, between the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and an IP network. The primary functions of a VoIP gateway include voice and fax compression/decompression, packetization, call routing, and control signaling.

Answer:A telephone that converts voice into IP packets and vice versa for voice over IP (VoIP) telephone service. The term usually refers to a telephone with built-in IP signaling protocols such as H.323 or SIP that is used in conjunction with an IP PBX in an enterprise. However, it may also refer to a software-based phone (softphone) that is installed in the user's PC and requires that calls be made from the PC