Jul 26, 2020
Q&A
Question: What is VoIP? How does it work?
Answer: Have you ever used any of the following functions within the last year?
If so, then you’ve used VoIP without realizing it.
Voice over Internet Protocol, also know as Voice over IP or VoIP, is a method of taking speech and converting it to digital packets.
The packets are then sent over an IP based network, like the Internet, to another destination.
VoIP has evolved quite a bit over the last few decades where it’s incorporated into many activities.
It’s also become so efficient that we don’t really notice the between making a call over the Internet versus using a “regular” phone.
How it works
From a simplistic point of view, VoIP capable devices are need on a network. They must also understand how to reach one another.
One way of identifying our VoIP clients is to assign phone numbers to the devices.
Another method is to assign a URI (uniform resource identifier) which is a technical way of giving a name to a VoIP device.
Once that’s in place, the following occurs:
Real time Protocol (RTP) between phones. RTP contains the spoken audio between devices on a VoIP network.
Of course there’s more meat to this discussion.
But this should serve as a small appetizer to what VoIP technology is and how it works.