Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) - Future of Communication

During the recent Internet stock bubble, articles in the trade press frequently said that, in the near future, telephone traffic would be just another application running over the Internet. Such statements gloss over many engineering details that preclude voice from being just another Internet application. This paper deals with the technical aspects of implementing Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), without speculating on the timetable for convergence. First, the paper discusses the factors involved in making a high-quality VoIP call and the engineering tradeoffs that must be made between delay and the efficient use of bandwidth.