Voice Over IP

BASIC TERMS AND CONCEPTS

Some of the readers of this book are familiar with the Internet, and others are not. I use the next part of this chapter to provide a tutorial on some basic Internet terms and concepts. The experienced reader can skip to the section titled, Evaluation the Factors in Packetized Voice (page 25).

The Internet is an association of thousands of user computers that communicate with each other through networks. These user computers are called "hosts." The networks are connected together through another machine that relays the host computer traffic between user applications (such as e-mail and file transfer) that are running on the hosts. The Internet uses the term Gateway or router to describe the machine that performs the ...