The Cable and Telecommunications Professionals' Reference, 3rd Edition

7   Voice over Internet Protocol Networks

Martin J. Reed

Introduction

Voice over IP (VoIP), or IP telephony, is changing the nature of fixed network telephony by providing Internet-based telephony applications and forming the new data/voice convergent backbone network infrastructure for traditional telecommunications operators. Technologically speaking, the components for VoIP were in place as far back as 1974 when the first IP telephony demonstration was made (Gray, 2005). However, it has taken some time for actual IP networks to mature to a state where packet networks can challenge and replace the circuit-switched networks that have been in place since the early days of telephony.

One of the problems has been that IP networks have not been ...